


All I Ask

by ariastarke



Series: Gendrya Week [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gendrya Week, Weddings, the best trope there is lets be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 66,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15387189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariastarke/pseuds/ariastarke
Summary: "So," Arya declares as she signs her name at the bottom of the contract. She finishes off the final k with a flourish, a swooping curve that loops once and underlines the preceding letters. "We're in agreement."Gendry nervously takes the pen from her and signs his own name, a shaky and unsure signature that differs so incredibly from hers. "We are. I look forward to fake dating you until this wedding business is through."Arya grins at him, and she feels a twinge of pride at seeing him gulp at the flash of her teeth. "That's what you think."(Or, the fake dating AU for Gendrya Week that no one asked for.)





	1. Eye Contact

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I have returned for Gendrya Week for the first time since 2015. I know, it's a miracle. I know, I still have to finish TAOI. I know. I know. Please, take what is clearly going to be a long fic as an apology, and enjoy the insanity that is my brand new Gendrya AU in which Arya needs a date for Sansa's wedding like, yesterday, and Gendry just so happens to be there.

There's something about being the youngest daughter in the Stark family that just pisses Arya off on a  _daily basis_. She doesn't know if it's just because she's the youngest daughter, or if it's because she's  _Catelyn Stark's_  youngest daughter, but there's just something that irks her to no end.

Truth be told, it's probably neither. It's not about being Catelyn Stark's youngest daughter — it's about being Sansa Stark's younger sister.

Sansa, who is young and vibrant and beautiful. Sansa, who is stronger than most people ever thought, who proved them all wrong. Sansa, who seems to want to make it her life's mission to show the world that she has found the balance between being a perfect lady and knowing how to open her mouth when it suits her — the kind of balance that Arya sorely lacks.

Sansa, who is currently crying over her wedding dress.

Again.

It's the fourth time this week. And the saddest part is, is that it's only Tuesday.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the dress. In fact, it's gorgeous. It's not what Arya would have pictured her sister to get married in at all. After all, the dress she'd always imagined was the one Sansa talked about all the time back when she was still with Joffrey. She'd wanted everything to be  _huge_  back then, the dress most of all. A poofy skirt, a long train, a lace veil that rested upon a tiara.

And while that vision did still fit Sansa's style to some degree, this dress is somehow more… _her_. It's floor length, with tight sleeves made of sheer lace that go to her wrists, but the skirt is surprisingly not poofy at all, and the bodice is covered with tiny diamonds. And instead of the cathedral train she'd gushed about for years, the Watteau train looks much nicer. Her veil is still lace, and it's still carried by a tiara, but the simplicity of the dress itself softens the entire look, makes Sansa look angelically warm instead of coldly regal. No, nothing is wrong with the dress at all.

It's just that Sansa is so happy about the fact that she's actually getting married that every time she sees the dress hanging on the door of her wardrobe, she just starts…crying.

It's getting rather tedious.

Catelyn, who is as used to this as Arya, turns to her younger daughter.

She opens her mouth, and Arya already knows the question that's about to be sent her way. It's the question that has been thrown around so many times for the past four months that Arya visibly stiffens every single time her mother looks at her.

"So, Arya, have you found a date for the wedding yet?"

It's conveniently the one question that manages to shut Sansa up, but even as Sansa's quiet sniffles stop abruptly and her attention turns towards her sister, Arya knows that's not why Catelyn asked her about a date —  _again_. It's because the wedding is in three weeks and Arya has not made a single move to find a date for her sister's wedding since her breakup with Edric Dayne four months ago.

"Haven't you heard, Mom?" Arya asks with raised eyebrows. "I've pledged myself to the Catholic Church. Surprise. I've decided to become a nun."

"Arya, we aren't even Catholic."

"What's the difference,  _really_?"

She's trying to goad her mother, trying to turn her attention away from The Question. But Catelyn's become used to Arya's many aversion tactics, and not just when it comes to The Question. She has, after all, raised her for the past twenty-three years.

"Arya, please. Take this seriously. You don't want to be the only one of your siblings without someone with you at the wedding."

"Believe it or not," Arya starts, "I really could care less."

"Well, then, do it for your sister!"

"I think I did more for Sansa than anyone was expecting when I agreed to the dress she picked out for me as her maid of honor without much of a fight."

"You threw a fit in the dressing room and ran out of the store still wearing the shoes from the display!" Sansa reminds her, eyes wide in indignation.

Arya furrows her brow at her in confusion. "Did I not just say I agreed without much of a fight?"

Catelyn's eyes close and she takes a breath through her nose, but Arya knows she's not  _really_  mad at her. Not yet, at least. There's still three more weeks for her to change Arya's mind, and until then, even Catelyn can find the humor in her daughter's empty jokes. She never says it or shows it, but Arya always manages to catch the flash of laughter in her eyes before she shuts it all down.

"Okay, Arya," Catelyn begins, and she's using her Mom Voice, which only makes Arya bristle.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she's run out of time to make jokes about her relationship status.

"I'm well aware that your breakup with Edric Dayne was hard — Arya,  _stop laughing_ — but it was four months ago, and it will be terribly embarrassing if you're the only sibling from both the bride and the groom without a date."

That was true, at least: Robb would obviously be going with his wife Jeyne, while Jon would be with Ygritte (who had promised Sansa that she'd leave her engagement ring at home for the night so no one who wasn't yet aware of her engagement to Jon would ask too many questions and take the spotlight away from the bride), and Bran would be with Meera. Even Rickon had managed to ask his girlfriend to the wedding, though he despised the word and regularly denied it even as everyone pointed out he'd dated only her for the past two months. And Willas's siblings both had dates, as well. Loras would be proudly attending with Renly, and while Arya had already forgotten the name of Margaery's date, she didn't doubt he was as handsome as she was beautiful.

"I can always say the breakup with Edric hit me harder than I expected. We did go out for a year, after all. I'm allowed to mourn a relationship."

"Think of the pictures."

"I'm short; I can hide in the back. And with the size of the wedding party, I doubt anyone will be looking at my dateless self."

"Think of the looks you'll get."

"When have I ever cared about what other people thought? Besides, if they're busy looking at me being single on my sister's wedding day, then I think Sansa needs to work on being prettier."

"Think of all the people who will not so subtly pity you and pretend it's concern."

Arya opens her mouth, but then she closes it when she realizes she doesn't have anything to say.

"Think of how they'll ask if you're okay now that you're the only one not in a relationship."

Her eyebrows stitch together, and she crosses her arms stubbornly.

Finally, Sansa looks up from where she's thumbing one of the diamonds on the dress's bodice and puts in her own opinion. "Think of all the people who will try to set you up with their grandsons and their great-nephews."

Arya closes her eyes and she takes a deep breath.

"Remind me again how long do I have to find a date?"

( O O O )

"It's not fair!" Arya explodes as she storms into his apartment without knocking.

Gendry looks up from his phone and raises his eyebrows, but he doesn't say anything.

Arya is standing by the door, her hand still clenched tightly around the doorknob, the key he'd given her —  _for emergencies, only_ , Gendry recalled ruefully — gripped in her other hand. She has a specific kind of expression on her face, pinched and exhausted, a hint of impatience decorating her face as she waits for him to speak.

He knows that she's waiting for him to ask what happened this time, but he only sits back against his couch and leisurely crosses one ankle over his knee, taking his time as he sets his phone down carefully next to him and sighs dramatically.

They're locked in a staring contest, and right when Arya opens her mouth to speak, he cuts her off. "What would you have done if I wasn't in the living room?" he asks. Arya's mouth closes and she slumps against the door. "Or better yet, what would you have done if I wasn't even  _home_? You would have just been yelling at the air."

Arya closes the door and pockets her key, crossing her arms and cocking one eyebrow at him as she waits impatiently.

Gendry rolls his eyes and stands up, heading to his kitchen so he can take out exactly what she's waiting for: The Chinese food takeout that she's positive is sitting in his fridge from last night. Every Monday night, Gendry ordered more Chinese food then he could ever eat in a single night and stayed up late working on whatever Ned needed him to do for the hotel, and every Tuesday, Arya would show up at his apartment to complain, or to watch movies, or hang out, but it was mostly just to take the extra Chinese food he always kept for her.

It was why she knew he would be home, why she knew he would be sitting on his couch and not in the second bedroom of his apartment that he'd managed to convert into something of a workspace. She knows him too well.

There's no space for a table in his apartment, but he's lucky enough to have a kitchen island with enough space for him to put three barstools on each side.

Arya claims the one in the middle on the side that faces the kitchen, while Gendry sits across from her, dumping five takeout containers in front of her, along with a plastic spoon, fork, and knife.

"So," he finally says. "How was your day?"

He gets a glare in return. Typical.

"I have to get a date for Sansa's wedding," she mumbles as she stabs a shrimp dumpling and takes a bite.

This wasn't news. Arya had spent the past four months complaining about this, almost as often as her mother tried pressuring her to get a date. Gendry shrugs, quickly stealing one of the dumplings and swallowing it before she can stab at him with the fork for taking her food.

"This has been going on for too long, Arya," he says. "I'm bored of hearing about it already. You've fought with Catelyn about this for too long — we both know you're going to end up disobeying her and showing up alone anyway, so what's the point in complaining."

Arya fidgets uncomfortably in her stool, swinging herself from side to side.

" _Because_ ," she starts, opening another container of fried rice, "my mother actually made a very good point earlier today. If I show up alone, and everyone else in the wedding party has a date, all anyone will do is pity me and be purposefully awful at covering it up, and then they'll try and set me up with someone."

Gendry cocked his head. "I would have thought you don't care what other people think," he mused, more to himself than to her. "Is this about Edric? Do you feel like you're not ready for people to pity you or…set you up with someone?"

Arya glares up at him, and furiously takes a bite of fried rice.

She chokes it up and spits it out into a napkin a second later.

"Ew!" She throws her fork down and moves to get a cup of water. "Is there pork in that? You know how much I hate pork! I can't stand it." She gives him an accusing look, but Gendry only stares back at her innocently.

When she has her water and she's sitting down again, this time with a container of plain white rice that she's taken the liberty of drizzling duck sauce all over, she sighs mournfully.

"It's not Edric," Arya answers eventually. "It's just the pity in general. I can't stand the attention. I don't want it. We dated for a year, big deal. It's not like we ever thought we were going somewhere serious."

"Arya, people don't just casually date each other exclusively for a year without thinking it's going somewhere."

"Okay, so we never talked about it!" she says. "The fact that we went an entire year without discussing it must have spelled 'disaster' to a few people! No one thought we were going to last."

" _Everyone_  thought you were going to last."  _Gendry included_. "No one knew that you guys hadn't discussed this stuff, so everyone assumed you had because that's what people in lengthy relationships do."

Arya twirls the fork with a piece of General Tso's chicken on it. "It's no one's business. The fact of the matter is, is that we broke up, and now if I don't have a date for Sansa's wedding, I have to deal with everyone thinking I'm not over it yet, and they'll spend the entire night either pitying me, or trying to convince me to give their nephew a chance." She shudders.

"Are you over it?" Gendry asks suddenly.

Arya looks up in surprise. "Of course I'm over it," she says, and it's the naked expression of shock at his question that tells him she's being honest with him. There's no carefully arranged mask on her face, just the surprise that she felt because she already assumed he'd know she was over her breakup with Edric.

"Well, that's good," Gendry says, nodding his head. "But I get why you're annoyed. Those people invited to the wedding…they don't exactly have everybody's best interests at heart. Even when they're telling you how you look  _great_  considering the circumstances, they're whispering to their friends how you've clearly been drowning yourself in chocolate after you split. Which," Gendry added quickly as Arya opened her mouth, "we both know isn't true. In fact, I've never seen someone get over a breakup as fast as you."

Arya smiled gratefully at him. This right here was why they were such good friends. He just  _got_  it. He understood how fake everyone was at these events. Even though she knew very well that these people had to be invited to the wedding so everyone could continue playing nice, it still bothered her.

Once again, she'd be the butt of a joke. She could have dropped fifteen pounds and shown up to the wedding looking even more beautiful than Sansa herself, but as long as she didn't have a man on her arm, they'd all purse their lips sympathetically at her and tell her how well she looked, ask her repeatedly how she was holding up. It wouldn't matter if Arya yelled that she was  _happy_  she was no longer in a relationship. No one would believe her. In fact, they wouldn't even deign to listen to her.

The look on her face must have exposed her thoughts because Gendry frowned.

"Hey," he said, poking at her wrist with his index finger, "you'll be okay. If you can't find a date, then I promise I won't go with a date either. We can go alone…together." She didn't allow him the time to figure out if that sentence made any sense; she was already asking a question.

"Do you  _have_  a date?" Arya asked curiously.

Gendry shrugged. "No. I was just saying, you know, in case I don't have a date by the time the wedding comes."

"It's not fair," she repeated angrily. "I only have three weeks to find someone. How inconsiderate."

Gendry raised his eyebrows incredulously. "Haven't your mother and Sansa been bothering you about this for the past four months?" he asked.

Arya scoffed and waved him away with an uncaring hand. "Whose side are you even  _on_ , Gendry?" she asked as she hopped off her stool to throw out the empty Chinese takeout containers.

( O O O )

Arya only lasts twenty minutes staring at her Facebook friends list before she shuts her laptop in frustration. Sansa had set up the profile for her and sent her the login information three years ago, her friend list already filled with the rest of the Stark family as well as some close family friends.

After Sansa discovered she'd deleted the profile, she'd simply created another one and didn't tell Arya about it. Arya found out three months later when her cousin asked her why she hadn't accepted his friend request yet at a family dinner.

Now she kept it because she didn't see the point of deleting it when she knew Sansa would always just make a new one. She thought it would be helpful to go through her list of friends to see if she could ask one of her male friends to be her date for the night, but it was a small list.

Arya liked to keep her online presence as private as possible, and that meant she was very careful when it came to choosing who was allowed on her list. She was picky when it came to interacting with people in person — it only made sense that she would be even more stingy when it came to what people saw of her online.

But now, she was wishing she was more like Sansa, who had a wide circle of friends both male and female. Friends who, if Sansa were in this exact situation (though Arya knew  _that_  would never happen), would rush to her side, tux on and bow tie perfectly straight, ready to walk her down the aisle.

There was a knock on her door, and Arya looked up from the closed lid of her laptop to see Jon sliding into her room.

"Still looking for a date?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

Arya wrinkled her nose. "It's stupid," she grumbled.

Jon laughed. "Come on. It's just one night. And who knows? Maybe you'll even end up liking whoever it is that you take."

"That's not  _it_ ," Arya said frustratedly. "There's no one for me to take."

It was almost embarrassing to admit. She was twenty-three, young, pretty, intelligent. It made no sense that it should be this hard to find a date for this stupid wedding. But then she thought of Sansa's pleading eyes, and Arya sighed. For her, she'd do it.

"What if I talked to Ygritte? Maybe she could set you up with someone?"

Arya laughed out loud, rolling onto her back and staring up at the ceiling. "Yeah, right. Mom would rather I go alone than bring along one of her friends. She'd probably have a heart attack."

Jon grinned at her in agreement, but he fell silent, and Arya knew that meant he was out of ideas. It made her uncomfortable. Was the only solution he could possibly think of really to ask his fiance's friend to take his little sister to the wedding just because she couldn't find anyone else? It was insulting at best and downright hurtful at worst.

She must have been quiet for too long because she felt Jon's hand settle on her knee comfortingly. Arya shifted it away from his grasp before he could say anything.

"Arya," he began anyway, "come on. This is for Sansa.  _Sansa_. The sister you used to hate, but love more than anyone now. The girl who's been dreaming of her wedding since she was three years old. The girl who's finally getting everything she deserves." His hands clench almost imperceptibly, and Arya knows exactly what he's thinking.

Joffrey.

Just the name inside her head is enough to make Arya feel a wave of anger. Years, Sansa had been with him, and no one had been able to see the warning signs until it was too late. He'd always been a little shit, but whenever he was with Sansa, he made sure to treat her like a queen. At least, when they were in public together.

It was still painful to remember the image of Sansa, twenty years old, standing on the doorstep of the Stark household in a turtleneck and sweatpants, duffel bag in hand and a bruise covering the right side of her face.

Both Robb and Jon had to hold Ned back from storming out the door and killing him with his bare hands.

When Sansa had come downstairs the next morning in a tank top that exposed the finger-shaped bruises against her throat, no one stopped Robb and Jon when they left, and no one said anything when they arrived home later that night with torn knuckles.

And now, five years later, Arya couldn't even see that young and frightened girl anymore. There were still traces of her, like when Sansa would get so quiet all of a sudden that everyone would simply stop talking so they wouldn't overwhelm her. Or times when Arya would knock on the door to her apartment and Sansa would take just a few minutes too long to answer and open the door with red-rimmed eyes. But Willas had changed that. He'd helped her become stronger.

Arya closed her eyes. "I know," she whispered hoarsely. "I  _know_. It's stupid to take this so seriously. It's one little date. One little date to make her day perfect."

Jon smiled softly at her. "All she needs is this one last thing for everything to fall perfectly into place," he said coaxingly.

Arya squeezed her eyes tightly and nodded determinedly as she sat back up. "Okay," she sighed. "Okay. I really have to find a date."

Jon patted her leg and squeezed her shoulder. "Let me know if you change your mind about talking to Ygritte. She wouldn't mind, really."

Arya snorted. "I'm sure her friends would."

"Nah," Jon disagreed as he stood up, stretching his arms. "None of them would. They think you're funny. They'd get a kick out of spending the wedding with you all night." And with that, he walked out of the room, shutting her door behind him.

It was the wrong thing to say, really. Sometimes, despite how close Arya and Jon were, he really needed to learn how to shut up. She didn't want someone who'd get a kick out of spending the wedding with her because they thought she was funny. Even if the date she expected to find was only going to be around for a single night, she would have preferred if they actually liked her.

And with that thought, Arya knows what she has to do. It's her last resort, the final thing on her list of options.

And she  _really_  doesn't want to do it.

But…Sansa.

Sighing heavily, Arya picks up her phone and opens her texts.

( O O O )

Arya had only had three boyfriends in her entire life before Edric came along, and they were all just sort of… _there_. No one incredibly important, no one she would look back upon wistfully. Even Edric had always been  _there_ , their lives always crossing at strange moments

There was Jackson Goldbloom, who asked Arya to Homecoming in freshman year. He gifted her with her first kiss that night, hard and close-lipped. It was more of a mash of two lips that didn't quite match up, but neither of them could really be to blame because they were only fourteen, and it was both of their first kisses. After Homecoming, he just kind of assumed they were boyfriend and girlfriend and clung to Arya and her fourteen-year-old self. He left a pink rose on her desk every morning before homeroom and somehow always managed to show up outside the cafeteria to walk with her to the math class they shared, even though his class during her lunch period was English on the fourth floor and the cafeteria was in the basement. She never knew how he made it outside the doors on time every day, but she never cared enough to ask. It lasted one month and ended because Arya was really starting to get creeped out by him. The rest of the year, he sat behind her in math instead of next to her. She never turned around, not even once.

Then came Michael Fitzgerald, in her junior year. He asked her to prom, and she was startled into saying yes because really, she never thought Michael had noticed her before. He was on the football team, and while he wasn't the star quarterback or anything, she would have thought he would ask one of the cheerleaders instead of the girl on the dance team. But he was cute enough, and her friends really wanted her to come with them to prom, and she said yes so she wouldn't have to be the only one in her group without a date. Looking back on that now, the irony isn't lost on Arya. They dated for the remainder of her junior year, but it was casual, and he was a senior who was going to Boston for college, so Arya kissed him goodbye at his graduation and never saw him again. He was sweet, she remembers that, but the most memorable thing about their relationship was that he was the first boy who got to see her take her shirt off, and she didn't even take off her bra.

And then came Daniel Spector, her dancing partner in Intro to Ballet her freshman year of college. She remembers that he had beautiful green eyes and strong hands and that his wrists never shook or trembled when he lifted her. She remembers that he was the first boy she introduced to her parents, and she remembers twelve-year-old Rickon not-so-subtly coughing " _Gay_ " into his soda when she mentioned they met in dance class. Luckily, Daniel had ignored it, recognizing the immaturity for the childish antics that they were, and two months later when they had sex for the first time, Arya discovered that Rickon was very wrong and that Daniel was  _very_  straight. But another two months passed and Daniel landed the leading male role in the touring company of  _Sleeping Beauty_ , so the two split. Sad to see the person she shared a few of her firsts with, but Arya managed to shrug it off.

And then when she was barely twenty-two, and barely out of college, she ran into Edric at an engagement party for a shared family friend. Pleasantries were exchanged, hugs were shared, and he offered to buy her a drink. It led to an invitation to dinner, and who was she to say no to an attractive man who showed interest in her? Their dinner led to him taking her out to lunch the following Sunday, and before she knew it,  _she_  was bringing  _him_  lunch at work every Thursday. It was a slow slide into an exclusive relationship that she hadn't expected, but she welcomed it. Edric was handsome, classically and traditionally handsome in a way she didn't expect to like, but his personality was charming enough that she realized it suddenly became something she liked, at least on one specific person. Her mother was overjoyed, especially when they passed the six-month mark, but despite the months that bled into each other, they never seemed serious. To everyone else, it looked like a serious relationship, but to the two of them, they hardly noticed. In the end, that's why they decided to break up. It was probably the calmest and most amicable breakup Arya had ever had, and the breakups she'd experienced in her life weren't exactly devastating.

They were never indifferent towards each other, just…wrong for each other, as a couple. As friends, the two of them worked great, but as partners, they never seemed to fit right. And they never noticed because they got along great, and when they would sleep together, it was always nice, so it seemed like they were doing everything right.

And then…one day, somehow at the exact same time, they both woke up and looked at each other, and realized… _Oh_. For more than an entire year, they'd been in a relationship that had only stood still. It hadn't moved one inch past their first dinner together. And when they realized that neither of them deserved that… _stillness_ , it was easy to call it quits.

But now, Arya was desperate. And if she and Edric were still friends like she assumed they were, then this one favor shouldn't be hard for him to agree to.

( O O O )

Edric Dayne was twenty-five, handsome, and the person everyone assumed Arya would marry. He was polite, but he could be fun when he was with the people he felt most comfortable with, and he was always reliable.

That reliability was only reaffirmed when he answered Arya's text within five minutes.

_Arya: Can you meet me at the Starbucks on W 5th at 7?_

_Edric: Sure thing._

Just  _sure thing_. Always to the point, never adding on any extra unnecessary messages like ' _I'll be in this seat_ ' or ' _I'll see you then!_ ' He never saw the point, which was good because Arya never saw the point in it, either.

He didn't text anything like Gendry, who somehow always managed to send her a wall of text when she just said she would be letting herself into his apartment on Monday because she needed to borrow his cheese grater.

And he was always on time. Arya parked her car a block away from Starbucks, and when she got there at 7:01, he was already standing right outside the door.

She smiled a warm smile at him when he noticed her, and it didn't feel awkward at all when he pulled her into a hug.

They settled into a table a few minutes later, Edric holding a cup of black coffee, Arya already using her straw to scoop off the whipped cream from her white chocolate mocha frappuccino. She rarely spent money on frivolous things, but when it came to sugary beverages, she was definitely willing to throw the $4.95 across the counter.

"So, how is everything going with you?" Edric asked as he sipped his coffee despite the steam still curling up from the cup. "What's up?"

Arya licked the whipped cream from the straw and took a sip of the drink. "I need a favor," she said.

Edric's eyes flashed nervously, but Arya was already speaking again. "Don't look nervous — I don't want to get back together if that's what you're worried about!" Edric began to speak, but Arya cut him off again. "I just need you to be my date for Sansa's wedding. It's in three weeks, and my mom and Sansa are down my throat every single day for me to get a date so I'm not the only one alone, and — wow, that sounded pathetic." She slumped back against her chair and took a much longer sip of her drink this time, practically slamming it back on the table when she let it go. "I just meant that, well, you know, everyone else in the party has dates and I'm the only one who doesn't have one. And I refuse to be pitied because I'm single again, or be set up with someone's great-grandson or whatever—"

"Arya, I'm seeing someone."

Arya stopped short, her eyebrows raising. She opened her mouth, tried to think of something to say, closed her mouth, and then opened it again. When she still found herself to be at a loss for words, she simply snatched her drink from the table and sipped.

And continued sipping.

For a long time.

"Arya, how are you still breathing — you've been drinking for like a minute and a half now."

Arya glanced back up —  _when had she even glanced down_? — and blinked rapidly a few times. She reluctantly let go of her drink and set it back on the table. It was halfway done now. She really had been sipping at it for a long time.

"Right," she said. "Of course you're dating someone. I'm happy for you. I really, really am." She means it, she does, she swears she means it, but…shit.

Edric clearly doesn't believe her, his expression naked and comforting, so he reaches his hand across the table, palm up, and Arya glances between his open hand and his open face, and tries to resist the urge to smack him.

"Please, Edric," she starts off, "you are still my friend, and I still have a great deal of respect for you, so don't insult me by thinking my reaction is anything more than me realizing how entirely screwed I am because now I have to go to my own sister's wedding alone."

He pulls his hand back.

Wise move.

"I didn't mean to insult you," he says, and she knows he means it. "It's just…if it were anyone else asking me, you know I would go in a heartbeat. But my girlfriend, well…we're still so new. We've only been going out for a month, and she knows the last relationship I was in was over a year long. And no matter how many times I try to explain how… _weird_  our relationship was—"

"It doesn't make sense," she finished for him, and he nods at her eagerly, grateful that she understands. "Yeah, no one seems to get it except for us, huh?"

"It was a pretty weird relationship," he repeats.

She  _understands_. Edric is a great guy, a great catch. He's noble and handsome, and he's always polite to everybody's parents even when they're sawing at a piece of their meat in an unnecessarily threatening manner (Arya's father had eventually warmed up to Edric, though). If she had just met him, and their relationship was barely a month old, she would also do what she could to keep her hold on him.

But Arya knows what she knows, and what she knows is that they don't fit right. They're like two corner pieces of the puzzle. They belong to the same picture, but they don't belong right next to each other.

He deserves to find his matching puzzle piece.

And she refuses to let her wedding anxiety get in the way of that.

For the next hour and a half, they go back and forth trading little bits of life they've experienced in the past four months, but she sees that Edric keeps a careful eye on her the rest of the time.

He buys her another frappuccino when she finishes her first one, this time a salted caramel, and he asks the barista for extra whipped cream, which she adores.

By the time she finishes the second frappuccino, he moves to stand up, and Arya glances up, wondering if he's going to leave, but he only goes back to the counter.

When he returns, he has another black coffee for himself, and he's nudged a small vanilla bean frappuccino her way.

She feels like she could cry.

It's not the girlfriend thing. She really is happy for him. Even Arya's thoughts seem repetitive to her at this point, but she wants him to be happy. It's just that the comments from her mother and Sansa, coupled together with the fact that Edric is now officially over her and dating someone else, have finally gotten to her.

She drinks this final frappuccino slowly, not just because it's a small and she wants to make the taste last, but because she wants to make  _this_  last. This encounter with Edric that she knows will most likely be their last one.

After this, she'll go home and be unable to sleep tonight because, really, why did Edric let her have  _three_  frappuccinos — he was supposed to be the responsible one here. And so she'll lay in her bed and think of how everyone was in a relationship, except for her.

Normally that wouldn't bother her. But something about the wedding, knowing that it was coming closer and closer, made Arya feel so small.

And she didn't like it. Not one bit.

( O O O )

By the time Arya gets home, it's almost ten. Robb is sitting on the couch, which surprises her, but she goes to sit next to him, curling her legs up underneath her. Automatically, as of it was on instinct, he wraps an arm around her loosely.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be home with your wife?" she asks with one eyebrow raised.

Robb shrugs. "I was helping Sansa make sure my tux fit… _again_. She swore this would be the last time until two days before the actual wedding when everyone has their final fitting, but I know I'm going to wear that stupid tux more than anything else for the next three weeks."

"Hmm," Arya hums to herself, thumbing at the scarf wrapped loosely around her neck.

"Jesus, Arya, I can smell the sugar on you," Robb says, leaning back to get a better look at her. "Where were you tonight?"

She shrugs. "I was at Starbucks. I met up with Edric tonight."

Robb doesn't say anything except "Oh. How is he?"

Except, he doesn't say it in a  _way_. He just says it…normally. Like she said she hung out with Gendry, or she got her nails done. Of all her siblings, Robb took her breakup with Edric the exact way she wanted them all to take it. He somehow understood that the two of them just didn't work, that they had been stuck in this routine, but it wasn't like the routine Robb had with Jeyne or the kind Sansa had with Willas. It wasn't a bad routine, but it wasn't a good routine, either, and he got it.

"He's seeing someone, actually. Has been for the past month. He showed me a picture of her. She's cute. A redhead. Taller than him, too, but she's always wearing heels. He thinks it's adorable."

Robb laughs and pushes himself off the couch. "Did he tell you that after he said he couldn't be your date to the wedding?"

Arya gives him one of her looks and he laughs again, reaching down to mess up her hair. She swats his hand away, her nails scratching at him sharply. "Hey, watch your lion claws," he says. "If I have scratch marks, Sansa will kill you."

Arya rolls her eyes. "Oh, relax. You deserved it. You have no idea how hard it's going to be to find a date for this wedding in three weeks."

"I'm sure you'll figure something out. Somehow, you always manage."

Arya smiled happily at the statement and stood up to give her a brother a hug as he headed for the front door. "Tell Jeyne I say hello."

"I will. I'm pretty sure Dad's asleep, he had a busy day at the office, so be quiet when you go upstairs."

She closes the door behind Robb and locks it, sighing as she unwinds her scarf from her neck and drapes it on the coat rack next to the door.

Arya knows she should probably go to sleep, but she feels so awake thanks to all the sugar. It only takes a moment of consideration before she heads to the kitchen, taking out a bottle of white wine from the wine cooler and pouring herself a small glass.

One glass of her favorite white wine was always enough to make her fall asleep easily when she felt like she was hours away from going to sleep.

By the time she made it up to her room, it was half-past ten, and she changed into her warm pajamas, happily curling herself into her blankets.

Just as she's about to shut off her bedside lamp and close her eyes, her phone buzzes from the nightstand. Arya reaches behind her blindly until her fingers close around her phone and drag it over to her.

_Gendry: Found your date yet?_

Arya rolled her eyes. Gendry  _would_  expect her to find a date just one day after complaining to him about how hard it was going to be.

_Arya: Not yet. It appears I'm all out of options. I'm officially screwed._

_Gendry: Hey if worse comes to worse I'll be your date._

Arya's fingers pause on her keypad, staring at the screen. All of a sudden, she feels like she's sixteen again, hoping that Gendry would notice how her blue bikini makes her skin look tanner in the summer. She blushes as she pushes thoughts of her schoolgirl crush to the back of her mind and rolls her eyes.

Years ago — that was  _years_  ago, she tells herself. Back when Gendry had only been friends with Robb and Jon. Back when he was fresh out of college, still struggling to find a job and a way out of his shitty studio apartment before Ned rescued him with a job at the hotel he owned. It took three more years, but eventually, he had managed to save enough money to get himself a two bedroom apartment.

By then, Arya and Gendry had developed a tentative friendship that only grew, and she had convinced herself to put her old crush behind her.

She had left him waiting for a response for too long. She didn't want him thinking he said something weird, or something that made her uncomfortable. Her fingers quickly flew across the keypad, hitting send before she could stop herself.

_Arya: What, are you gonna be my boyfriend, too?_

_Gendry: Why not? It'll help you get out of this stupid situation._

Her breath stopped. She wasn't breathing.

Was she still breathing?

Arya wasn't 100% sure she was breathing.

_Arya: Stop joking._

_Gendry: No, I'm being serious. You said you've thought of every option. You even went to Edric to ask him to go with you, but the thought of going with your best friend is too outrageous?_

Her  _best friend_. Yes, that's exactly what he was, the same way she was  _his_  best friend. Arya had to keep reminding herself that that's what they would always be.

 _Best friends best friends best friends best friends_ —

Her phone buzzed.

_Gendry: Should I take your silence as a sign that you're considering this? Or is it too weird?_

Arya held her breath for longer than necessary, and slowly let it out through clenched teeth.

 _Arya: We'll talk tomorrow_.

( O O O )

"So let me get this straight," Arya said, swiveling in circles on Gendry's bar stool. "You think that if we say we're going to be each other's dates for the wedding, it'll look too pathetic. So your plan is to…actually date?" She hesitated at the final words, feeling them stick to her throat. It hurt to even get them out. She didn't know what was happening — all she could do was keep spinning in her bar stool so she wouldn't have to look at him.

"Well, no. We could…pretend to date. Just until after the wedding business is over. And then it'll be back to normal."

What the fuck was  _normal_? This conversation wasn't even close to normal!

Arya sighed dramatically and stopped spinning in circles only to start rotating in the opposite way. "So we just…announce to the world that we're suddenly a couple? And then we go to the wedding together? And then…we just break up, like, the day after? Don't you think it'll be a bit obvious that it's all a lie after we break up the very day after?"

"It won't be suspicious, trust me. Obviously, I'll tell everyone I caught you having sex with Loras in the supply closet," Gendry deadpanned.

Arya stopped spinning long enough to shoot him her famous death glare.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but Loras is gay as fuck," she pointed out. "It'll be more believable if we say  _I_  caught  _you_  having sex with Loras in the supply closet."

She can't believe she's actually thinking of possible situations in which they might believably break up the morning right after she attends her sister's wedding.

"Please," Gendry scoffed. "No one would believe I'd have sex with Loras in the supply closet."

"Oh, yeah?" Arya asked as she resumed her spinning. "Why, because you're so obviously heterosexual?"

"No, because there's no possible way two guys can comfortably have sex in a supply closet. The majority of us aren't flexible that way. You, on the other hand, have  _years_  of dancing experience—"

"Okay!" Arya shouts, much louder than necessary. "No one is being caught having sex in the supply closet!"

Gendry's suspiciously silent for a few seconds longer than usual.

"…Handjob?" he asks.

"I'm leaving."

She jumps off her stool, but all the spinning makes her dizzy and she sways slightly to the left. Gendry quickly catches her, laughing at her.

"Relax, I'm only kidding," he says. She doesn't stop frowning at him so he sighs and leans against the counter. "I was thinking we'd wait, like, a…a week or two to, you know…'break up.'" He uses air quotes when he says 'break up', and Arya raises her eyebrows.

"You've really thought about this?" she asks.

"Well, yeah," Gendry says it like it's no big deal. Like it's completely normal to be talking to your best friend about fake dating them so no one has to be alone at anyone's wedding. "You seemed pretty upset the other day when we were talking about it, more so than usual. I don't want you to be upset on your sister's wedding day."

"I know," she says. "It's Sansa's day; I shouldn't be making it about me."

Gendry scoffs. "No, idiot. Because I don't want you to be upset in general."

Arya pauses, and they look at each other for way too long to be considered normal. She tilts her head up just so, and their eyes  _really_  meet, and her lips part slightly. He's always had the nicest eyes, but she's never found the nerve to say anything. And now, talking about dating each other, talking about weddings…God, it would be so  _perfect_  to say something right now…

He blinks, and then Arya comes back to herself, and then the moment is gone.

"And you think making me date you for the next month isn't upsetting?" she jokes.

And maybe it's because she was just so focused on his eyes a second ago, so wrapped up in whatever eye contact they'd had, but she thinks she sees something akin to hurt flash across those blue, blue eyes. She's about to open her mouth, apologize, tell him she's being an asshole for no reason and he has every right to be mad at her, but then he shrugs and everything is suddenly normal again.

"Okay," Arya says quickly, trying to shrug off the awkward moment. "I…I guess I have a date for Sansa's wedding."

( O O O )

"Okay, okay, okay," Arya said, biting the bottom of her pencil as she stared at the blank page in front of her. Gendry was sitting next to her on her bed, looking at her intensely. "I think the first rule should be that, no matter what, if one of us wants to back out, it's over. No questions, no hard feelings."

Gendry nods at her, and Arya writes it carefully on the paper. Later, when they figure out all the rules of…whatever this is that they're trying to do, Arya will copy it again in pen neatly so she and Gendry can sign their makeshift contract.

"What if it's, like, the morning of the wedding, and everyone is dressed, and I just decide to say I'm done with all of it, what about—"

Arya turns a glare on him. "Gendry," she says, "are you planning on backing out the morning of the wedding?" she asks.

"No," he replies instantly.

"Then it doesn't matter." But she still writes it on the paper.  _Just in case_ , she tells herself.

"Oh, I have one," he says after a few more minutes of silence. "What if one of us gets another date?"

The thought makes Arya stop chewing on her pencil, and she looks back up at him. The idea of him taking someone else to this wedding already makes her feel sick. Maybe she should put rule number one into effect already and back out. She doesn't know if she can handle this, she can't handle this, she can't—

"I think if that should happen, for either of us, I mean, we have the right to break the agreement, then. But we have to talk about it with each other first. Like, you would have to give me a quick heads up, but I wouldn't…I wouldn't stand in your way or anything."

Arya keeps quiet throughout this whole speech, and once Gendry's silent for a few seconds more, she adds it to the paper.

"You can't make fun of me," she says suddenly. "I hate it, and if you start making fun of me in front of people, I'll probably forget and punch you or something. That's not very girlfriend-y."

"I'm sure that's what  _you're_  like as a girlfriend," he mumbles under his breath, but Arya hears anyway and punches him in the arm. " _Ow_!"

"Sorry," she says, completely not sorry, and shrugs.

Gendry continues rubbing his arm. "Okay, anything specific I can't make fun of you for? Because you've got to give me something here. No one is going to believe it if we just…don't tease each other anymore because we're supposed to be making out in your bed like teenagers."

Arya tries not to blush at that statement. She tries very hard.

She fails.

"I think," she says slowly, "we should each get three things that we can't make fun of. Like, for instance, you can't make fun of my height. At all. I  _will_  kick you in the shin."

"Fine." He sighs dramatically, like this is a big sacrifice for him, and rolls his eyes. "I don't want you making fun of my job for your dad. If you start up, everyone will just start throwing marriage comments around. And I don't need any of that."

"Of course you don't," Arya agrees sarcastically. "You can't say that my voice gets all squeaky when I'm annoyed. Which it totally doesn't, but anyway, you can't make fun of it."

"Okay. It's not like anyone will even know what I'm talking about, since you're always annoyed, so you've always got your squeaky voice on."

Another punch to the arm.

" _Stop that_!"

Another shrug.

"Oh, I know my second one. You can't talk about my dating life pre-you. It's off the table." Arya knows the reason for this. Gendry didn't have a  _real_  love life. It was more like…random flings that lasted a week or two, three weeks at most. He was always busy with school, with work, with trying to get enough money together, that relationships had always come second. And she knows that Robb and Jon remember those girls that passed through his front door all the time. If she brought it up, they'd immediately get protective over their baby sister.

"That's an obvious one," she agrees instantly. "Now, my last one." Arya tapped her chin with the pen absentmindedly as she thought it over.

"Hey, what do you think your brothers would say if I brought up you, the supply closet, and your years of dance experience —  _Jesus, Arya, stop punching me_!"

"There will be  _no_  talk of flexibility in the presence of  _any_  Stark family member. Actually, add every Tyrell family member to that list. You know what, don't mention flexibility  _at all_  for the next month, okay?"

Gendry's laughing even as he rubs his arm again, and he shakes his head fondly at her. "See," he says, pointing an accusing finger at her. "Squeaky voice."

It goes on like this for the next hour, the two of them bickering over what should be on the contract, what isn't important, what's so stupidly basic that anyone with common sense should already know and is therefore unnecessary to add. But finally, Arya manages to neatly copy it onto a fresh sheet of paper, her handwriting pristine and elegant.

"So," Arya declares as she signs her name at the bottom of the contract. She finishes off the final  _k_  with a flourish, a swooping curve that loops once and underlines the preceding letters of her name. "We're in agreement."

Gendry nervously takes the pen from her and signs his own name, a shaky and unsure signature that differs so incredibly from hers. "We are. I look forward to fake dating you until this wedding business is through."

Arya grins at him, and she feels a twinge of pride at seeing him gulp at the flash of her teeth. "That's what you think."

( O O O )

1.) Gendry and Arya will tell each other if they want to back out or break off the agreement.

1a.) It doesn't matter when this happens — it could be the morning of the wedding — if either party wants out, the agreement is over and no hard feelings will be had.

2.) If a prospective date for either Gendry or Arya appears before the wedding, they can break the agreement.

2a.) They can't ask them to the wedding without talking to the other person first.

2b.) Once again, no hard feelings will be had.

3.) Gendry will have to refrain from mocking Arya for the following topics:

3a.) Her height.

3b.) How her voice gets squeaky when she gets annoyed.

3c.) NO JOKES ABOUT FLEXIBILITY DO YOU WANT EVERY STARK IN EXISTENCE TO KILL YOU GENDRY?

4.) Arya will have to tone down her sarcasm towards Gendry in public about the following topics:

4a.) His job for her father.

4b.) His dating life before her.

4c.) Their "sex life".

5.) Kissing is allowed.

5a.) Only close-lipped and has to be pre-discussed in some form or another.

5b.) If hands move below hips, the offending party risks the chance of losing their hand.

6.) There will be no public dates, only discussions of dates that supposedly took place the night before (These have to be pre-discussed so stories match up).

7.) Unless either Gendry or Arya breaks the agreement beforehand, this arrangement is automatically terminated a week and a half after the wedding.

8.) The reason for breaking up is that two friends as close as they are simply shouldn't date just because they're bored.

9.) Neither Gendry nor Arya is allowed to tell the truth to  _anyone_  under any circumstances, even after the contract is terminated.

9a.) Yes, Gendry, not even Hot Pie can know, do you want everyone to find out?

9b.) Yes, Arya, not even Sansa can know, do you want her to have a heart attack before her wedding?

10.) Gendry and Arya will always be honest with each other with how they feel about the agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: So, a lot of people always ask why I pair Sansa up with Willas, and the answer is actually pretty simple: I just don't ship her with anyone else, to be honest. And, reading the books, her almost-marriage to Willas was probably the closest she came to a truly happy marriage where her husband would have treated her with kindness and care. It's really as simple as that.
> 
> Anyway, stay tuned for the rest of the fic! Reviews are always welcome and highly encouraged!


	2. Caught Red-Handed

It takes one day for Arya to regret signing her name on the contract.

She has it all worked out: She'll tell Sansa she's been seeing someone, and Sansa will predictably shriek, and within moments, the whole family will know about it.

She hadn't realized how uncomfortable the whole situation would be  _after_  the family knew about her supposed relationship with Gendry. But now, sitting in the dining room with her mother staring angrily at her and Jon glancing between her and the door, like he's expecting Gendry to come in so he can hit him, Arya really thinks she should have thought this through a bit more.

"Since when have you been dating Gendry?" Catelyn asked.

Arya pinches her eyebrows together and opens her mouth, but Jon cuts her off before she even gets a word out.

" _Why_  are you dating Gendry?" he asked her. "He's so much older than you. He's...he's twenty-eight. And you're twenty-three! And he...he's just not right for you. He's too...He's too…" He scrambles for the right words, and Arya jumps in when she has the chance.

"He's too  _what_ , Jon? He's too nice to me? He's too financially stable, too steady on his feet, too mature? Too kind to this family? Of all the people I have dated, I would have thought you'd all be relieved that it's Gendry I've chosen now."

It's too much, she realizes a second too late. She's putting it on too thick. Too many compliments, too many praises. So many things she's thought of Gendry for so long, but she's always been too scared to say them out loud, because she was always worried he'd see right through her and realize that she liked him much more than a friend. And now that she had the opportunity, she couldn't stop the words from spilling from her mouth.

Jon, at least, had the good sense to keep his mouth shut after her small speech. Sansa was looking at her curiously, her lips pursed hard. Arya could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

"I don't...understand," she began, the words coming out slowly, as if she was trying them to sound them out for the first time. "We've been trying to get you to find a date for this wedding for so long...why did you suddenly start dating Gendry?"

Arya's brain momentarily went quiet, until she remembered the story she had settled on with Gendry. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

"Well, we've been dating for a month, now—"

"A  _month_ —" Jon started.

"Yes, a  _month_ ," she interrupted, shooting a glare at him. "We've been dating for a month now, but it's been quiet, casual...we didn't want to tell anyone until we were sure how we...felt about each other."

Sansa's eyebrows go up at this, and Arya knows the question before she even opens her mouth. "Oh? And how  _do_  you feel about each other?"

Arya closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them, Catelyn, Sansa, and Jon are all looking at her intently. Waiting for her to answer.

"I like him," she says softly. "I like him a lot, actually." It's no different from the things she's ever revealed to her family about how she feels about any of her boyfriends, but because it's about  _Gendry_ , they seem to take it differently this time.

Jon visibly deflates, and he exhales heavily in what Arya assumes is relief. She knows it's because he sees they aren't just messing around with each other.

"Then why did you ask Edric Dayne to go with you to the wedding the other day?" Sansa asks.

"Because we weren't sure if we were going to tell anyone about our relationship until after the wedding. We were too nervous to tell you guys, because we thought you would all put too much pressure on us...which you guys are doing a great job at accomplishing, by the way," she adds on shortly, at which Sansa blushes a little.

"It's just...we agreed that we wouldn't go to the wedding together, and we'd find our own dates if we could. But when neither of us found someone who would be willing to go with us, we kind of took it as a sign that maybe it was...maybe it was time to stop hiding our relationship and be honest about it."

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jon frown, and Arya makes a mental note to ask him about it later, but now, she has more important things to deal with.

"Well...it's nice to know that you have a date to the wedding," Catelyn says, and Arya rolls her eyes. Her mother really did have a one track mind. "But it's even nicer to hear that you're with someone again. Even if he is a bit...older than you, you are twenty-three now, and able to make your own choices."

Arya holds her breath as she waits for the words she's been counting on all day.

"I'm happy for you, Arya."

Her breath comes out in a rush.

( O O O )

A little while later, Sansa knocks on Arya's door, and comes in to find Arya sitting on her bed reading a book with her headphones in. She pulls the headphones out of her sister's ears, and Arya looks up to see Sansa standing over her. She smiles and sits up, closing the book and setting it on her nightstand, making room for Sansa to sit next to her. She has a feeling she knows why Sansa is hear, away from Catelyn and Jon, and she's been ready for it since she signed her name on the contract.

"So," Sansa starts off, "you and Gendry, huh?"

Arya nods absentmindedly, a smile coming to her lips without even realizing it.

"When did this all happen?" Sansa asked.

"I told you already," Arya replied. "We just decided it was time to stop keeping it a secret from everyone—"

"No, you  _know_  what I mean, Arya," Sansa interrupts, looking at her meaningfully.

Arya stills. She does know what she means, but she's not sure if she can answer. Agreeing to pretend to date Gendry was a bad idea, she knew it from the beginning, and she still said yes. She still negotiated terms of what was allowed and what wasn't allowed, and they'd even come up with a story of how they got together. Answering Sansa's question would be no problem.

It was trying to keep her feelings down that would be the issue. Years of having a crush on her brothers' friend had been hard enough, but she'd thought it was over. Maybe those feelings would never go away — it was rare to forget the feeling of having your first  _real_  crush — but she thought she'd stopped having feelings for him when she realized it was never going to happen.

But the thought of holding his hand in public, maybe even kissing him if they both agreed to it beforehand, putting on a show like they were a happy couple...Arya would have to work hard to make sure she didn't fall into her little fantasy world.

Sansa was oblivious to her sister's inner turmoil. "I mean, I know you had a crush on him when you were younger—"

"I did  _not_!" Arya squeaked.

Sansa rolled her eyes. "Please. I saw how you liked him when you were, what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Maybe you still liked him a little when you were sixteen, but I remember thinking how cute it was."

Arya aims a kick at Sansa's ankle, but she just kicked Arya back.

"It was a stupid crush, that's all," she mumbles. "I never thought he felt...that way about me. And he didn't. Not until...you know, recent events."

Sansa's interest visibly piques. "Recent events?" she repeats.

Arya blushes. "You know...my breakup with Edric. Your wedding coming up."

"I thought you said you guys had agreed to go separately?"

"We did. But the excitement of it all, seeing how happy you were with Willas, well...we both got caught up in it all. He kissed me one day, when I was hanging out in his apartment, and then we went to dinner one night, and it just...happened very naturally after that."

"Hmm," Sansa mused quietly. "If I were you, I wouldn't tell Robb or Jon that you guys kissed in his apartment before he even asked you to dinner. In fact, I wouldn't even tell them you kissed in his apartment at all."

Arya snorted. "Please. I'm not telling them that we kissed  _at all_."  _Because it hasn't happened yet_ , she reminds herself mournfully.

Sansa laughs with her for a few moments before she stops and sits in silence for a minute. Arya can tell she's waiting to ask a question.

"What is it?"

Sansa hesitates for a second more before pushing the question out. "Well...I never would have thought you two would actually date. It's just weird to think of you two as a couple, but...I don't know. I guess people never thought of Willas and I like that, either, right?"

Arya bites her lip as she thinks about it before she slowly shakes her head. "Um...no," she says firmly after a moment of consideration. "I never thought you two would date. I never even thought of the possibility of you two ever getting together. The thought of you with someone other than Joffrey seemed so...strange to me at the time."

Saying his name in Sansa's presence used to be like throwing a curtain over her. All her light seemed to flicker out in a blink. But now, she only sits up straighter, her chin raising a just a little higher.

"But not because I thought you two were so well-suited for each other that it seemed wrong to think of you with anyone else," Arya continues. "I think we both know that I never liked the idea of you two together. Actually, I think everyone knows that I felt that way. It was more like...like he was keeping you locked up. And I was so used to seeing you trapped that I couldn't even imagine you being free. It was like I didn't even know you were trapped at all because it was like that from the very beginning. I never knew — I never thought...about how bad it could be—"

She has to stop before she either starts crying or yelling.

One look at Sansa tells her she's already crying.

Sansa wraps an arm around Arya's shoulders and leans her head against hers. "It was bad," she admits. After she left Joffrey, Sansa never sugar-coated any of the things that had been done to her. She never covered the final bruises he'd left on her with makeup, she never defended him. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was still ashamed of the mark he'd left on her, both physically and mentally.

"But," Arya says, her voice still a little shaky, "now, with Willas...you're so different. I can't imagine you with anyone else in such a different way. It's like...I can't imagine you with anyone else because he brings out such a specific kind of happiness in you that I hadn't seen since before Joffrey."

Sansa tries to wipe away her tears, but they keep falling and it takes her a minute to accept that it's a lost cause. She sniffs and laughs once.

"Okay," she says, pushing herself off the bed. "Save it for your speech at my wedding as my maid of honor."

Arya laughs. "Oh, please," she says as Sansa backs out of her room. "There's no way in hell that I'm giving a speech."

( O O O )

"I don't get it, though," Robb says to his tightly clenched fists.

Arya's been spending the past three minutes looking back and forth between Robb's face and his hands, wondering if he's going to pull something if he keeps clenching them so hard. And for the past three minutes, he hasn't looked at her at all.

"What don't you get? I'm dating Gendry. Gendry's dating me. What's so confusing?"

"Because. Because it's Gendry."

"And?"

" _Well_ ," Robb says, and Arya knows he's about to go off on a rant, so she quickly readies herself to tune him out once he really gets into it. "It's just that you're so young, and he's so old, and you really shouldn't be dating someone you're so close with. And have you thought of what Mom and Dad are going to say when you tell them? Oh, and don't think Jon is going to be so easy-going about all of this. He's going to threaten to skin Gendry alive if he even touches you in one wrong way, and I'll be right there to back him up."

"Okay,  _first_." Arya holds up one finger in Robb's face. "I'm twenty-three. I'm an adult. I'm able to make my own choices and decisions. And Gendry's not that much older than me. If I were, say, fourteen, and he were nineteen, I would completely understand. But now? I'm fully capable of deciding who I want to date.  _Second_. Mom is fully supportive, and says she's very happy for me now that I've gotten over my breakup with Edric, and she's even agreed to tell Dad for me so I don't have to sit through this conversation for the third time with him. And  _third_. Jon has already told me all of this, to which I say go ahead. But if you really think I'm willing to get myself into a situation where I don't feel safe or comfortable with the person I'm with, or that I won't be able to get myself out of it, and that I need my big brothers to threaten their best friend for me, then you really don't know me at all and I'm very disappointed in you."

Robb is quiet after that, and he finally looks up at her, releases the tight hold he has on his fists, and opens his mouth once more. But he doesn't say anything else about Gendry, or thinly veiled threats.

"You told Jon before you told me?"

Arya rolls her eyes and leans over the counter to kiss Robb on the cheek.

"I'm leaving. Go tend to your wounded male pride. Tell Jeyne I say hi, and I'll see her at the Tyrells for dinner."

( O O O )

Arya might regret signing the contract, but all in all, it's not as bad as she would have thought it would be. It's a bit awkward at first, but they find their rhythm rather quickly.

Arya tries not to think too hard about how easy it is for them to date.

The day after Arya tells her family that she's dating her best friend, Ned announces that he wants to have Gendry over for dinner that night. Arya is too shocked to do anything but nod and fumble blindly for her phone to text him.

Ned's never asked to invite one of her boyfriends for an actual dinner until at least a month into knowing she was even in a relationship.

Well, Arya thinks, technically we did say it was a month, but  _still_. Ned would rather sit through an entire day of business meetings than sit through an uncomfortable dinner with one of his kids' boyfriend or girlfriend.

It's either a very good sign, or a  _very_  bad sign, one that Arya tries not to dwell on for too long, or too hard, and texts Gendry quickly before she loses her nerve.

_Arya: My dad wants you to come over for dinner tonight. Don't wear sweats. And don't wear white._

_Gendry: Okay. No sweats is obvious but why no white clothes?_

_Arya: Because you eat like an animal, and I'd rather you didn't wear something where a potential stain would be obvious._

_Gendry: Always thinking ten steps ahead. You do make a wonderful girlfriend._

She also tries not to think of that final text for too long.

She fails miserably.

( O O O )

Despite her warnings and attempts to guilt Robb and Jon into  _not_  threatening Gendry, they do it anyway.

In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have told Robb ' _go ahead_ '. She doubts he heard anything past those two glorious words.

They reemerge from Jon's room and come back downstairs with Gendry trailing behind them, shooting daggers at Arya. She tries to make herself invisible by disappearing into the pantry and spends five minutes looking for the salad dressing.

When they sit down next to each other at the table, he leans close to her so he can hiss in her ear, "You didn't have to tell them that you gave them free reign to skin me alive, you know."

Arya laughs and tries to cover the sound with her hand.

Jon, sitting directly across from Arya, glares fiercely at Gendry. As if it was a crime to make his girlfriend laugh.

"I didn't say they had free reign," she whispers back as she piles salad onto her plate and passes the bowl to Gendry. "I said they could go ahead and threaten you. In my defense, I didn't think they would actually do it."

Gendry scoffs, and it looks like he's about to say something else, but then everyone else sits down around them, and Arya kicks him in the leg to get him to stop talking. In response, he kicks her back, and she quickly jabs him in the side with her elbow.

He grunts uncomfortably and Arya smiles pleasantly as Sansa hands everyone wine glasses. She's keeping an eye on them, Arya notices, but she pretends not to.

Once everyone is seated at the table, Arya glances at them all and patiently waits for someone to speak, but no one does.

Everyone is looking at each other with something like panic in their eyes.

Everyone except for Gendry, who has resigned himself to keeping his head down, staring fixedly at his plateful of salad.

Okay, so maybe this would be a bit more uncomfortable than Arya had predicted. She would have thought that Gendry's presence in their lives before they announced their relationship would make all of this go smoothly, but they're only two minutes of dinner and no one's said a word. Not that Robb needs to say anything to convey to Gendry that he's just waiting to make good on his threat.

There's a moment when Bran clears his throat, and everyone somehow turns to look at him completely in sync, but apparently, he wasn't planning on saying anything.

He gets a panicked look on his face. "Oh, I was just, um...clearing my throat. Bit of lettuce got stuck…" He trails off.

Arya sighs.

Sansa hears the sound and catches Arya's pleading eyes, so she also clears her throat and sits up straighter in her chair. "Jon, have you and Ygritte decided on whose apartment you'll be moving into after you get married?" she asked.

Jon had been too busy copying Robb's glare to hear Sansa's question. "Hm?" he asked.

Sansa rolls her eyes. "Were you too busy trying to burn a hole into Gendry's forehead?" she asked. "I  _said_ , have you and Ygritte decided on which apartment you'll move in to? After your wedding?"

Jon frowns for a moment as if he had forgotten he was engaged himself and nodded. "Yeah, we, um...actually, we decided to give up our leases as soon as they end, and move somewhere a little bigger."

Ned coughs once and fixes Jon with a stern look. "Bigger?" he repeats. "You're not saying Ygritte's pregnant, are you?"

" _No_ ," Jon insists, his face going bright red. "No, she's not pregnant, at all,  _trust me_. We use protection, I swear—"

Robb disguises his laugh as a coughing fit, and Jon turns to him accusingly.

"Do you need a cough drop?" he asks sarcastically.

Robb grins at him. "Think I'm good."

It  _was_  laughable, Arya thinks, that Jon, a man closer to thirty than twenty-five, was still scared by his father's Dad Voice that he clammed up like a teenager and stammered out his words like a seventeen-year-old boy caught with his hand up his girlfriend's blouse.

That one little slip was like a dam breaking: All of a sudden, conversation flowed easily, and thankfully, the attention was shifted to Jon instead of Arya and Gendry.

"So, tell us about this apartment," Catelyn ordered as she began serving pieces of cut up chicken on everyone's plate next to their salad.

"Well, we haven't found one yet," Jon admitted. "We've been looking, but we haven't found a place both of us agree on."

"If you're waiting to find a place you both agree on," Gendry says, "you'll be stuck in separate apartments for the first five years of your marriage."

It startles a laugh out of Jon, and Arya sits a little straighter in her chair as she catches on to the sound. She hopes his joke was enough to make everyone forget the real purpose of this dinner: To feel out the newfound relationship.

Luckily, if anyone else remembers, they don't bring attention to it. Eventually, wine is poured for everyone except for Rickon, and the feeling of familiarity only gets stronger when he makes a show of trying to guilt Catelyn into pouring him a little.

Someone always gives in and pours Rickon a little wine from their own glass, and Arya is thinking if she should nudge Gendry to pour him a little from his own glass, to get Rickon to warm up to him a little, but she doesn't think it'll go over well with her parents if they see someone outside of the family giving their underage son alcohol.

So to get Rickon a little bit more on her side, just in case it helps him like Gendry a bit more, she pours him some, a little extra than she normally would, and refills her glass.

Rickon winks at her, and Arya finds that she can suddenly breathe a little easier.

Maybe it wouldn't be so hard after all.

( O O O )

The dress won't close, and Arya wishes that she had an  _actual_  boyfriend so that she wouldn't feel self-conscious about asking him for help when it came to zipping a dress closed.

They really need to make something to help people close zippers easily when they're alone.

It's a dress she bought specifically for the dinner at the Tyrell house. Arya had tried to beg off going, but Catelyn and Sansa had both held firm. Both families in their entirety were going to be there, and that included Arya. The dress, though, wasn't half bad. It was a deep red skater dress, with a strappy geometric design on the back. It had a lower neckline and a shorter skirt than she was used to, but it was probably one of the most flattering dresses Arya had. When she'd bought it, Sansa said it was the just the right mix of casual and semi-formal, perfect for this dinner.

She was just about to call out for her mother or Sansa to come to help her when there was a knock on her door. Arya let go of the zipper and opened her door just a crack to see who it was. Sansa stood outside the door, already dressed and ready to go. "I'm changing," Arya said as a greeting. "Can you help me with my zipper?"

Sansa stepped into the room, dressed in a rose-colored lace halter romper and black suede over the knee boots, a leather jacket folded neatly over her arm. Her red spilled over her shoulders in long waves, and Arya was struck by how much she looked like Catelyn in the old pictures she'd seen of their mother.

"You look really pretty, Sansa," Arya said as she turned around to let Sansa zip up the back of her dress.

Sansa moved Arya's over one shoulder and quickly zipped it up. "Thanks. You look nice, too. It's a shame Margaery won't get to fawn over that dress."

Arya turned back around to face her sister in confusion. "What are you talking about?" she asked wearily.

Sansa looked too pleased with herself.

"I texted Gendry—"

"Sansa—"

"And he said, without any suggestions from myself, by the way, that he was going to be taking you out for dinner tonight. So, even though I was so terribly sad that you wouldn't be joining us for dinner tonight, I decided to put my dear baby sister's lucky date ahead of yet another dinner with my future in-laws and let you go."

Arya folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "You said this was his suggestion?"

"...Yes."

She held out her hand. "Let me see your phone."

"...No."

"Sansa!"

"What did you want me to do, Arya?" Sansa asked. She walked into Arya's closet, digging through piles of boots and sneakers to find the pair of shoes she was looking for. "You said you haven't been on a proper date yet, aside from that one dinner you had. You deserve a real date, and I know you aren't very excited about going to the Tyrells tonight. Am I right or wrong?"

Arya hesitated before answering. No, she didn't want to go tonight. Not because she had anything against Willas or his family — she liked them all, actually, very much — it was just that all of the get-togethers and formal dinners were getting repetitive to her at this point.

But at the same time…

Saying that Sansa was right was at the bottom of her bucket list.

She stayed stubbornly silent until Sansa let out a noise of triumph and emerged from the depths of Arya's tragically disorganized and messy closet with a pair of black stilettos in her hand, her two fingers hooked through the straps as they dangled from her hand. "See? You want to go on a date with your  _boyfriend_ , or else you would have undressed by now." Sansa pushed the heels into Arya's hand. "Here. Wear these. I don't know why you've never worn them before."

Rolling her eyes, Arya took them out of her hand. Sansa was right; the tag was still attached to one of the straps. She ripped it off and stepped into the shoes, zipping up the back of it.

Sansa stepped back to look at Arya and cocked her head to the side. "Do you want me to do something with your hair for you?" she asked. "I know I'm going to meet Willas a little earlier than everyone else to help his grandmother set up for dinner, but I can do a braid if you want."

The kindness of Sansa's offer hit her much harder than Arya would have expected, and she only managed to nod her head before heading to the chair in front of her dresser to watch what Sansa did with her.

Her phone buzzed from next to her, and she quickly read the text from Gendry.

_Gendry: Have you heard yet? We're going on a date. I'll pick you up in 20 minutes._

_Arya: What happened to no public dates? That's rule number 6 asshole._

_Gendry: Do you know how hard it is to say no to your sister when she starts bringing up reasons and explanations? I was half expecting her to send me a power point presentation. Seriously, why didn't she become a lawyer?_

Arya snorted, and Sansa tugged gently on a piece of hair she was working on. "Stop flirting with your boyfriend and tell me if this is good so far," she ordered

Arya looked up into the mirror as requested. Sansa had braided a piece of hair over the top of her head like a headband and pushed the rest of her hair over her shoulder. She smiled gratefully at Sansa. "It's lovely. Thank you."

"Thank you. I'm here all week," Sansa said, already sliding her arms into her jacket. "Okay," she said, straightening the lapels and standing in front of Arya. "Willas should be here in a few minutes to pick me up. How do I look?"

Arya stood up as well and looked at her from head to toe. She really did look beautiful. "You look amazing. Aren't you going to be cold, though?"

"Nope. Willas's car has the best heater, trust me." She kissed her cheek and opened Arya's door. "I'll see you later tonight."

A few minutes later, she heard a car horn outside her window and rushed over to see Willas pull up to the front of the house. Sansa came running out, somehow perfectly keeping her balance in her heeled boots, and dashed into the car. Through the glass, she saw her lean in and kiss Willas quickly before they drove off.

Arya stands by her window for a few more seconds, leaning her head to the side as she wonders what it would be like to be that...open with someone. To rush into the warm comfort of their car, kiss them hello, and not even have to worry about it. Even when she was Edric, Arya used to feel nervous when she would kiss him. It was like...like when you were sitting in a classroom that was dead silent, and you had to throw out a piece of garbage. You were doing something completely normal, but it felt like you couldn't choose a worse time to do it. That's what kissing Edric had been like. She felt out of place when she did it as if she was disturbing the peace, even if they were hidden in the shelter of his car.

She wonders what it would be like to kiss Gendry. He would probably be a good kisser, Arya thinks. She's overheard enough stories from his college years that she knows he was...popular with girls. And she couldn't blame them, really. Years of working in a mechanic's shop had given him plenty of muscle, and his handsome face and blue eyes only helped him when it came to picking up girls. With all his experience, Arya suspects he'd be a fantastic kisser.

She hopes the opportunity arises for her to find out for herself.

Her phone starts buzzing again, back at her dressing table, and Arya rushes over to it. Gendry's name starts flashing on the screen, and she quickly picks up the call. "Hello?" she says into the speaker, trying not to sound like she was just thinking about kissing him.

"Hey," Gendry says. He's whispering like he's trying not to be heard. "I'm down the block from your house...Should I come up, or should you come down here and we'll just drive off?"

Arya looks out her window, and she sees the barest hint of Gendry's car. It's white, and it's a pretty old model, but it gets him from one place to another, and he says that's all he needs. Like he always said, why should he spend thousands of dollars on a brand new car with all the newest add-ons when he could get a cheap car and fix it up himself?

"We shouldn't even be having this conversation," Arya says angrily. "You're already breaking one of our rules.  _No public dates_ ," she reminds him again.

"I know, I know. I'm sorry," he apologizes. "But what was I supposed to do? Sansa texted me, and then when I tried to dodge her, she called me. I tried to ignore it, but she kept on calling, and I couldn't just  _ignore her_."

"Gendry…"

"You act like I haven't thought this through all the way." He tsks her in mock disappointment, and she practically  _hears_  him shaking his head at her slowly. "As if I don't have the Chinese delivery place holding our order already so we can pick it up on our way back to my place."

Arya grins; he really does know her so well, it's almost scary. "Impressive," she says.

"I can hear you smiling like an idiot through the phone," he says. "You can do better than that."

Arya snorts. "I'll come downstairs and meet you in your car. But you have to pull up to the house and honk. Or else it'll look too planned. You have to make it look like I didn't know when exactly you'd be here."

"No problem," he says. "Oh, by the way, before I forget. I don't want to blindside you when you get into the car, but how's your breath?"

Arya stops with her hand on her doorknob. "Fine. Why?"

"Because I'm going to kiss you when you get into the car. Thought you should know. Is that okay?"

Arya opens her mouth and tries to speak, but then she closes her mouth. She nods but then she remembers that he can't see her. "No, yeah, that's fine. As long as your breath doesn't stink."

Gendry laughs. "Please. I just ate fish soup." She's about to say something nasty when he hangs up on her, and Arya groans in frustration. She looks down at her outfit, too formal to sit in his apartment and eat Chinese food, but her family thinks she'll be going out on a date.

Arya sighs in resignation and quickly grabs her bag, digging through it until she finds a small container of breath mints.

Better safe than sorry.

Catelyn is waiting by the bottom of the stairs when Arya rushes down after hearing Gendry honk the horn. "I heard about your date. You look lovely, Arya."

Arya smiles at her, pretending to be rushed as she looks for her jacket. "Thanks. Sansa did my hair for me. Do I look okay?"

The nervous look on her face isn't all just for show.

"I think you need a longer dress," Rickon remarks from the kitchen island, and Arya shoots him a dirty look as she puts her jacket on, pulling her hair out from beneath it and throwing it over her shoulder.

"I'll see you later tonight, Mom," Arya says, kissing her cheek before heading to the door. She calls out a final goodbye to her dad, who yells from his bedroom to have fun and not be home so late. But before she can start a fight, Catelyn waves her out the door with a knowing look and mouths  _I'll handle it_.

Arya slides into the car, rubbing her hands together against the cold air outside. Without greeting Gendry first, she turns the heat towards her and puts her hands up.

"Are they looking?" Arya asks without looking at him. The light is still on in the car from opening the door, and Arya doesn't know how long it'll stay on so they can see from the house.

Gendry leans forward to make it seem like he's saying something to Arya as he tries to get a look at the house.

"Yep."

Arya nods once and rubs her hands together one last time before leaning back in her seat and turning to Gendry. "Good."

He moves towards her and his lips on hers before she can even process how quick it all happens. One of his hands move to her hair to move a few pieces away from her face, and it stays there to cradle the side of her face, his thumb resting right on her jaw.

They keep their lips stubbornly closed, but it's surprisingly gentle. Arya hesitantly kisses back for a few seconds before Gendry eventually breaks away from her and buckles his seatbelt to start the car.

How long was it? How much did they see? The light in the car is still on, and only shuts when they both have their seatbelts on, so if Catelyn and Rickon were watching from the window, the chances of them having seen  _everything_  were pretty high.

They're quiet in the car for the first few minutes of the drive before Arya can't help but break the silence. "You didn't eat fish."

It's the first thing that comes to her mind, and she regrets it the second it leaves her mouth.  _You didn't eat fish_? What a stupid thing to say. She internally swears at herself for saying it, but Gendry doesn't seem to mind. Since she got into his car, he's been as smooth as ever. She wonders if this is how he acts whenever he's on a date with a girl he actually likes.

Nope. Not a good road to travel down at all.

"Obviously," Gendry answers. "I popped in, like, seven breath mints right before you got into the car. I wasn't going to have our first kiss taste like fish."

Arya thinks about his last sentence for the rest of the ride to the Chinese restaurant. Their  _first kiss_.

Meaning more to come.

( O O O )

"It's just a question," Gendry insisted through a mouthful of sesame chicken. "Come on, answer. If you had to choose between going to this wedding or going to back to your middle school years, what would you choose?"

Arya only stares at him as she continues shoveling forkfuls of rice and chicken into her mouth, not breaking eye contact until he finally sighs.

"Fine, fine. Don't answer. I know you'd rather go back to your middle school years, though."

"Oh, come on, Gendry, that's not true," she says sarcastically. "If I decided to go back to my middle school years, then we wouldn't be dating right now."

Her casual jokes about their pretend relationship shocks a laugh out of him, and he shakes his head at her. "Well, I'm certainly enjoying our date right now. So I wouldn't want you to go back to your middle school years, either."

Arya grinned happily. "It is a pretty awesome date, isn't it?"

They've been sitting at his counter for the past half hour, eating their way piles of Chinese food. The second they'd entered his apartment, Gendry had thrown her a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt, and she'd gladly accepted them. She'd do anything to get out of these heels, and though Arya loved her dress, she didn't want to spend the whole night wearing it. Gendry really did decide to spoil her tonight.

"Thanks for saving me from going to this dinner tonight," she says suddenly.

Gendry shrugs off her gratitude like it was nothing and takes an egg roll out of one of the containers. "Don't thank me. Thank Sansa. She's clearly on our side."

"Yeah, it was pretty nice of her to get me out of going to the Tyrells for dinner tonight." She checked the time on her phone. They should all be sitting down to dinner in twenty minutes or so. "I think she just wants to make sure this goes right."

It makes Arya feel guilty for a second, knowing how Sansa likes to get involved with all of her relationships and make sure everything is going right. It's only going to make it worse when they decide to break up.

"Why were you so against going there tonight anyway?" Gendry asks as he cuts an egg roll in half and hands one of the halves to her.

"It's not that I was against going tonight. I'm just bored of all of this wedding stuff already."

"You'd think it would get easier now that the wedding is so close."

Arya gives him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? Have you  _met_  my sister? She's getting more nervous by the second! I'm pretty sure two-thirds of her is still convinced our two families hate each other so she's trying to plan every kind of get together she can to make sure nothing blows up at the wedding."

"But you guys have never hated each other."

"I know! It's ridiculous."

"Well...you can't really blame her, I guess. I mean, I'm sure that when you get married, you'll also go a bit crazy making sure everything is perfect, right?"

Arya laughs. " _When_  I get married? More like  _if_  I get married. Who's going to want to deal with my mess of a family? Or my mess of a...well, me?"

It's a joke she makes all the time, poking fun at the fact that none of her relationships last, that she's only had four real boyfriends and casual flings in between, and usually Gendry is the first to laugh.

Except for tonight. Because there's some kind of intense look on his face, his eyebrows drawn together and his mouth turned down in a strong frown. He's looking down at his plate of food, something like concentration and disappointment mingling together in his expression. "You shouldn't say things like that," he tells her eventually.

"Say things like what?" Arya asks. It's like she never even noticed the silence. And really, she hadn't. It's such a commonplace comment for her to make that she barely even registers when she says stuff like that anymore.

"About not getting married, or anything like that. Actually, no, forget not getting married. Just...you shouldn't say stuff like  _that_. About how now one would want to deal with you. I can't imagine someone who wouldn't want to  _not_  deal with you."

Arya's hand clenches tightly around her fork, her hand freeing as she hears his words. "Well," she says, shrugging it off and not looking up, "you shouldn't say things you don't mean."

"Who says I don't mean it?" His voice takes a turn for the defensive, and Arya immediately bristles. It's like her instincts ready themselves for a fight even when it's just Gendry.  _It's just Gendry_ , she repeats to herself.

"Well, for starters,  _you_." She points a finger at him. "If you actually meant it, then you wouldn't have suggested we do...this in the first place." She waves her hand between their two bodies, indicating their relationship. "It's fine, I'm not mad or anything. I'm not even sure if I want to get married myself. Maybe that's just not the path I'm supposed to take or whatever. Maybe having a steady relationship isn't what I want."

"Arya, you're only twenty-three. You can't possibly say that now when there's still so much life left."

"But it's what I want at this point of my life," she says. "Maybe you're right, and in five years I'll be in a committed relationship with some big investment banker or something, but right now, I'm content."

That wasn't entirely true. She was frustrated, mostly. She was angry that Gendry had arranged this, insisted they make rules and boundaries and different ways to assure they were both comfortable, and then told her she couldn't give up hope that someone would actually want to be with her, crazy family and prickly personality and all.

Gendry stayed quiet for a few minutes after her speech. The only sounds in the kitchen were the sounds of their plastic forks scraping against the bottom of cardboard containers.

"I'm sorry," he said finally.

"For what?"

"For making you think that the only reason I thought of this was because I didn't think you could get a date. Obviously, you're capable of getting dates and boyfriends and...stuff like that."

"Stuff like that?" Arya repeated, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"Don't be an asshole," he mumbled.

"You started it," she drawled, hopping off her bar stool and heading to the fridge.

"Well, I'm trying to finish it. You could accept my apology like a regular person," he teased.

"Don't worry," she said as she pulled a bottle of coke from the fridge. "I accept your apology. It was the most heartfelt, sweetest apology I've ever heard—"

Gendry yanks the bottle out of her hands, and she shrieks in indignation. "Hey!" Arya tries to reach it but he has it held over her head. "Now who's being an asshole?"

"Look at how nice I was to you, and now how you're repaying my kindness and remorse with sarcasm and snark." He shook his head slowly in disappointment and tutted at her.

Arya stopped her jumping and crossed her arms over her chest, giving him her best glare. "If you think I won't climb over you to get my drink," she told him, and delighted in the way his eyebrows shot up in surprise, "you're sorely mistaken."

He tried to laugh it off, but they were too close to each other to pretend to be casual. He slowly lowered the bottle to her, but she didn't take it. It stayed between them, clutched tightly in his hand, while they continued staring each other down.

And then the moment was broken when Gendry's phone buzzed from the counter.

Arya jumped back and grabbed the bottle from his hands, reaching for a cup and pouring herself some soda. "You should check who that is."

But Gendry had already seen the text, and he let out a shout.

"Who is it?"

"It's your brother!"

Arya froze. "Robb?"

He shook his head.

"Jon?"

Gendry nodded and passed his phone over so she could read the texts.

_Jon: sorry to interrupt your date with my sister but I'm heading to your apartment to pick up my tie that you borrowed last week_

_Jon: Ygritte insisted I dress up nice for this Tyrell dinner_

_Jon: I usually wouldn't use your spare key but I figure you owe me since you're dating my sister and all_

Arya immediately jumped off her stool and threw Gendry's phone back to him. "Give him an excuse. Whatever you can think of."

"An excuse? Like what? What could I tell him that would actually make him turn his car around and go back? You know Jon, he won't just leave. Especially if he thinks I'm not here."

Arya bit her lip as she thought it over, tapping her nails against the counter impatiently. "Tell him that your apartment is a mess and you don't want him to see it like this."

Gendry sent her a look. "Arya, half of this mess  _is_  Jon's mess. Where do you think he goes when he doesn't want Ygritte yelling at him to clean up?"

"Then say he won't even be able to find his tie in the mess!"

_Gendry: You really shouldn't come to my apartment is a mess. Probably won't even be able to find it in here._

_Gendry: Can't you borrow a tie from Robb_

As they wait for his text, Arya begins shoving empty Chinese containers into the trash, and Gendry puts the ones that still have food into one of the cupboards that hold all of his plates. It's only a few seconds later that Jon's response comes through.

_Jon: I would but all of Robb's ties suck_

_Jon: Besides I'm already at your front door_

"Oh,  _hell no_ ," Arya says, flinging the phone at Gendry. "Come on, we have to get to the second bedroom before he gets the spare key and unlocks the door."

She says it a second too late.

Jon turns the lock and opens the door, and is greeted with the sight of Arya holding Gendry's hand, wearing his sweats and his t-shirt, barefoot and trying to pull him in the direction of the bedrooms.

Jon looks between the two of them, and then his eyes find Arya's heels, knocked over from where she'd thrown them into the living room when she'd taken them off. And there, on the couch, was her dress.

Because leave it to Arya to throw it on the couch after changing.

Jon's eyes go back to Gendry, who's gone absolutely red at this point, and he opens his mouth.

"Before you say anything," Arya pipes up, letting go of Gendry's hand as if he had burned her. "You should probably get the whole story first. You see, the restaurant was completely packed, and there was no way we were getting a table tonight, so we decided to just come back here and—"

"Have sex?"

" _No_ ," Gendry says. Arya knows he means to sound firm and insistent, but his voice cracks and it only makes him sound even more nervous. She wants to punch him for this, she really does.

Jon's eyes sweep the apartment one more time and raises his eyebrows. "Well, Gendry, your apartment looks pretty damn clean to me. Except, of course, for Arya's dress, and her shoes, which I assumed you took off right before you  _had sex with my little sister_!"

"We weren't having sex!" Arya said loudly, jumping in between the two of them.

Just in case.

"Do you know what would happen if Robb came in and saw you guys like this right now?" Jon asked. It was like he hadn't heard her.

Arya scoffed. "Like what?" she asked. "We're both fully clothed—Look, Gendry is still wearing what he wore when he came to pick me up! And the only reason I'm wearing his clothes is because he was kind enough to lend me something to wear so I wouldn't have to sit in an uncomfortable dress and heels all night."

There's silence then, while Jon tries to ingest the information Arya just gave him. Half of what she's said since Jon walked through the door is a lie, but she doesn't care. All she hopes is that he believes all of it.

"So then...why didn't you just go somewhere else? If the restaurant was packed?"

"Because I wanted our first official date to be special. Not a night where we spend the whole time hopping from one place to another before we finally get a table."

Jon looks between the two of them for a few more seconds before he relaxes, and Arya lets out a breath. But she doesn't move from her position standing between them.

She's not sure she trusts Jon yet.

"Okay." Arya takes a breath. "Okay. So since we're all calmed down now—"

"I still don't believe that you didn't even check at least one more restaurant before you came to the conclusion that ' _Hey! Maybe we should just head over to my big, empty apartment where I have no roommates and no reason to put a sock on the door! It's not like there's anyone around to catch me red-handed while I have sex with my girlfriend!'_ "

Arya closes her eyes.

"Well, this apartment isn't that big, man," Gendry says lightheartedly.

He's such a fucking idiot.

Jon starts to move around Arya, his hand already balling into a fist.

She puts a hand on his chest to stop him. "Okay,  _no_ ," Arya yells. "Jon, step back. First of all, even if we did have sex, it's none of your business. I'm a grown woman who can choose who she decides to have sex with, and when it happens."

"So you admit you had sex."

"No! I'm saying that we didn't have sex, but even if we did—which, once again, let me reiterate that we did not have sex—it wouldn't be any of your business, and it would be between me, Gendry, and the bed we choose to have sex in."

For once, Gendry was looking at Arya as if  _she_  had lost her mind, and not the other way around. Jon didn't seem to be taking her outburst any better. If anything, she'd just signed Gendry's death certificate by saying that even though they didn't have sex, they definitely would be at some point.

They all looked at each other in hesitation, waiting to see who would make the first move.

Finally, Gendry spoke up. His voice was mournful and resigned as he said his next words:

"Would it help if you just punch me now and get it over with?"

( O O O )

"I'm just saying, if you hadn't opened your mouth towards the end, he might have let us off," Arya said as she pressed a cluster of ice cubes closed in a Ziploc bag against Gendry's cheekbone.

He glared at her furiously, but the red mark she was currently icing lessened the ferocity in his gaze. "Just shut up and get more ice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys are enjoying the story :) If you want to know, [this](https://www.tobi.com/sg/product/62547-tobi-date-night-pleated-dress?color_id=99323) is Arya's dress, and [this](https://www.tobi.com/sg/product/70183-tobi-cut-it-out-halter-romper?color_id=100718) is Sansa's romper.  
> As always, reviews are greatly appreciated and very much encouraged :)


	3. It's A Sign

After what has now been dubbed as The Incident by Arya (despite Gendry telling her to shut up and stop talking about it already), things surprisingly turn back to normal rather quickly. With only two weeks left until the wedding, there didn't seem to be any time left to stress over trivial things, something that Arya thanked her lucky stars for every day since Jon punched Gendry in the face.

It's a process to adjust to the idea of Gendry being her best friend and remembering that he was her boyfriend in public, but it's something she gets used to.

Sometimes, Arya wonders if she finds the balance a bit  _too_  easily. It's a thought that makes her nervous, but what can she possibly do? The whole point of this is to make people believe what they're selling.

It's the only thing she can think of to justify it in her mind.  _It,_  being her incredible ability to somehow blur the lines between friend and fake boyfriend while simply sitting across from each other in Starbucks. Not even touching. Not even looking at each other.

Gendry is busy on his phone, doing God knows what. Arya doesn't care enough to ask what he's doing.

Mostly because she, as Sansa's younger sister and maid of honor, is busy writing her speech. Despite pleading with Sansa, and begging her to let the responsibility fall on Margaery's shoulders—who would undoubtedly do a better job—Sansa refused to allow it.

"You do owe me," she had pointed out when Arya had asked her again this morning. "You spent the past month making me go absolutely  _crazy_  over finding you a date, and here you had a boyfriend of your very own hiding in plain sight. You owe me a speech. And it better be  _fantastic_."

It was hard to argue with Sansa. She somehow always made the best points.

Sometimes Arya didn't even know why she bothered trying.

_Sansa. Today, on your very special wedding day, I want to congratulate you on finally reaching the point you've been dreaming of since you were a little girl. Even at the young age of five, I can remember you, just two years older than me, talking to Mom about the dress you wanted to wear. You had the most high-pitched, girlish voice a child could have, but the way you spoke somehow sounded so grown-up, so sure of yourself. There's not a doubt in my mind that_

She ripped the page out of her notebook and crumpled it up in a little ball. Gendry looked up at the harsh sound of paper tearing against the metal springs of the notebook and raised his eyebrows.

"Frustrated?" he asked, bringing his cup of coffee to his mouth and taking a sip. He'd been kind enough to buy Arya her own cup of coffee, though she'd tried her hardest to insist on getting a frappuccino. He'd refused, though, on account of the weather being impossibly cold, and the fact that she didn't need any more sugar in her system.

"Beyond frustrated," Arya grumbled, putting the cap back over her pen and setting it down on the open notebook. She looked down at the table, her eyes scanning the rather large pile of crumpled pieces of paper she'd acquired over the past hour and a half that they'd spent sitting here. "I just don't know what to write, and this...it really shouldn't be me up there giving that speech," she said quietly, not able to meet Gendry's eyes. "You don't have to sit here, you know. I don't even know why you decided to come along today."

It was true—she hadn't invited him. He'd texted her earlier that morning asking if she wanted to hang out, but she'd only told him that she was going to Starbucks to work on her speech. Next thing she knew, he was texting her to be ready in ten minutes for him to come to pick her up.

"Hey, I wanted to come along," he said, shrugging his shoulders casually. "Nothing makes my day better than seeing you struggle over something as simple as writing a speech."

His attempts at humor did nothing to cheer her up like he'd hoped they would. Instead, his words only made Arya frown harder. The words  _struggle_  and  _simple_  kept clanging around in her mind.

As if she needed another reminder of how bad she was at this.

As if she needed another reminder of how she'd inevitably embarrass herself at Sansa's wedding.

"Sorry," Gendry apologized softly. "That was a dick thing to say. I know that this isn't an easy thing to do—even more for you. I know you aren't all that great with getting all your feelings out."

"No," Arya sighed, "I suppose I'm not, huh?"

"It's okay, you know," he said. "I'm sure that no matter what you say, Sansa will appreciate your speech all the same. There's nothing you could say that would actually disappoint her."

"I doubt that. This is her wedding day, and she left me with this...responsibility that I just can't handle, and I..."

Gendry reached across their small table and touched his fingers to her wrist, causing her to look up and meet his gaze. "Hey," he urged. "She wouldn't have asked this of you if she didn't think you were going to do an amazing job."

Arya snorted. "Yep, that's Sansa. Always thinking ten steps ahead and wondering what option would make her day go just like she'd planned." It was a mean thing to say, and she knew it even as the words were coming out, but she couldn't help it.

"That's not fair, Arya. You know that's not what I meant. Sansa asked this of you not because she wanted it to make all her guests think how perfect her wedding was. She asked this of you because she knew that you'd be able to reach down deep and get your real thoughts on that piece of paper."

They both looked down at the blank piece of paper waiting for Arya to start scribbling away on. After a few more beats of silence, Gendry continued. "Okay, maybe not that specific piece of paper, but you know what I mean."

He was grinning hopefully at her, his eyebrows raised in anticipation.

It worked; Arya cracked a smile.

It was small, but it was noticeable. Gendry considered it a win.

"See, you're smiling. That means your mood is improving. Which means you should be able to write at least a few sentences you don't hate."

Arya bit her lip. "I don't know..." She glanced at the pile of balled up papers again and felt that twinge of anxiety rush through her once more.

"Hey, if it helps," Gendry started, "I'll read over whatever you write next. Now that you have someone who could proofread it, you'll actually feel encouraged to write something you think I'll approve of, which means you'll be in the right mindset to write something good."

Arya looked up at him incredulously, her eyebrows raised in surprise. "Did you take some kind of psychology class that I didn't know about?" she joked. But joking was good. Joking meant that she was feeling better, more upbeat. Her mood shifting to something more lighthearted meant that she could write something appropriate for her maid of honor speech.

Huh. Look at that. Gendry Waters, right about something at last.

Gendry knew exactly what he was doing, but for once, he decided against rubbing it in her face that he was right about something. Instead, he just took a sip of his coffee and waited for her to get started on a new draft.

( O O O )

The next morning, Arya woke up feeling surprisingly light on her feet. She wasn't used to opening her eyes and feeling like this. Not that she woke up in a bad mood every day, but...today, it was as if she woke up and experienced what it was like to have a  _good morning_. She swung her legs over the side of her bed and walked to the bathroom, quickly brushing her teeth.

By the time she got downstairs twenty minutes later, her hair wet from the shower and feeling comfortable in the sweats and tank top she'd donned, her mood instantly dropped the second she saw Sansa sitting at the kitchen island, her wedding binder splayed open in front of her.

When Sansa heard Arya coming down the stairs, she brightened and smiled at her. "Oh, good. You're up. I let myself in about a half hour ago, but I didn't want to wake anybody."

Arya glared at the wedding binder. She had seen too much of that over the past few months. "No one wants to be woken up. It's  _Saturday_."

She knew exactly what was coming, and she was dreading every second of it.

Sansa grinned at her like she knew what was going through Arya's head. Which, of course, she did. "Well, it's a good thing you always have a free schedule on Saturdays. Because we're getting the final details of my wedding settled today."

Arya groaned before Sansa had even finished her sentence. "Sansa, no! It's my day off—"

"You don't even work."

There really wasn't any response Arya could come up with to fight that.

( O O O )

_Gendry: Do you want to catch a movie or something? I'm bored today._

Arya perked up at the text and let out a triumphant laugh.

Sansa looked up from the binder and peered at Arya's phone. "No," she said simply before Arya even realized she had been looking at the text.

Arya made a noise of frustration, one of the many she'd forced out in the past two hours they'd been sitting there. "Sansa, come on. My boyfriend wants to take me out to a movie. You can't actually be thinking of begrudging me the time I could be spending with the man I'm dating."

"Um, that's exactly what I'm thinking of," Sansa said, clicking her pen and circling the number of her florist in bright red. There were several colors spread out before them: Red for bills that needed to be paid, purple for confirmation of appointments and dates, blue for final RSVPs on Willas's side of the guest list, and pink for Sansa's side.

Sansa's checklist looked like a six-year-old had gotten their hands in some markers and started circling whatever they could with whatever colors they found. And yet, her wedding was probably the most well-organized event Arya would ever be a part of. While Sansa had spent the past two hours circling numbers that she needed to call and finalizing payments and arrival times, Arya had been tasked with crossing out everything that was finally finished.

"Come on, Sansa," Arya begged. "Have a heart. Let me spend some time with Gendry."

"Sorry," Sansa said without looking up from the page she was turning, "I'm too busy pouring my heart into my vows. I don't have any compassion left."

"Oh?" Arya replied. "Is that how it'll be from now on? Now that you'll be married, you're just going to abandon your family because you won't have any compassion left for us?" She raised her eyebrows accusingly, but Sansa still wasn't looking up at her. "Wow, Sansa. That's really nice of you. I always thought you were the best sibling out of all of us, but you just love to prove me wrong at every chance you get—"

"You can invite him over to help if you want, but you're not leaving this house until I can finally throw out this binder."

It was probably the best offer she'd get.

"Well, then I won't be leaving this house until the day  _after_  your wedding," Arya grumbled as she picked up her phone. She texted Gendry a quick message to get his ass over here to save her from dying of boredom.

Only twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the front door, and Arya rushed over to get it.

Gendry was standing on the other side, holding out a brown paper bag for her to take. Hesitantly, Arya reached out and took it from him, the scent of something sweet and sugary wafting from the bag.

Inside were two cinnamon buns, somehow still warm.

"You're a god among men, Gendry Waters," she breathed, hugging the bag against her chest. "Please tell me they're both for me."

"Had one in the car on the way here. They're all yours."

Arya didn't bother offering one of them to Sansa. They both knew she had been keeping herself on a strict and solid meal plan to make sure she didn't gain or lose any noticeable weight in order to keep the measurements for her dress perfectly steady.

Arya looked over her shoulder towards the kitchen where Sansa still sat, trying to look like she wasn't casually spying on them. Arya quickly glanced back at Gendry with a silent question in her eyes. He only responded by leaning down and placing a swift kiss on her lips, drawing back smoothly and heading towards the kitchen.

"You two are so cute," Sansa said as if she had just glanced up and seen them kissing rather than waiting to see if they would do it in her presence.

Arya reclaimed her seat while Gendry took one beside her. "Enjoy the show, Sansa," she responded simply.

"So, what are you guys even doing right now?" Gendry asked, pulling the binder towards him.

Both Sansa and Arya slapped his hand away from the binder, and he yanked it back with a shout of indignation. "Ouch! What was that for?"

"You do  _not_  touch the Binder," Sansa ordered, narrowing her eyes threateningly at Gendry.

"Wow," he whistled, rubbing at his hand. "I can practically hear the capital B in that sentence."

Arya laughed. "Trust me, Gendry. You don't want to mess with Sansa's wedding binder. She's discarded the Bible in exchange for it. It's her new Holy Book." She got a glare of her own from Sansa, but she only smiled innocently.

"This isn't a joke," Sansa replied. "You know, Gendry, I was going to let you just sit there and keep Arya company, but now that you've mocked the Binder, I'm putting you to work."

"Um, no."

"Um,  _yes_."

"Sansa, I want this wedding to go exactly as you planned. But just because I want that for you, doesn't mean I'll contribute to it."

"You began contributing the moment you started dating my sister. Now sit your ass back down. You're taking over the calls."

Arya was watching the exchange with absolute glee on her face, not even bothering to hide it as she took bite after bite of her cinnamon bun.

Gendry and Sansa looked at each other for a few seconds more, silence stretching out between them as Arya chewed as quietly as possible. Finally, Gendry let out a resigned sigh and sat back down, his hand going for the phone.

Sansa nodded once, a pleased little smile decorating her pretty face. "That's what I thought," she said with a knowing look. "Here are the numbers you need to call. All you have to do is say you're calling about the Tyrell-Stark wedding to confirm the time each item should be arriving at the Plaza. I've put the dates and times everything is expected to be there, so just look for those. You can use Willas's name if you want."

When Sansa got into a rhythm, she really did get into it. It was honestly impressive.

Gendry nodded rapidly as if Sansa was a military officer and he was her newest recruit.

Arya cocked her head at Sansa. "Are you trying to get my boyfriend whipped before I get the chance to do it myself?" she asked accusingly.

Sansa smiled innocently. "I have absolutely  _no idea_  what you're talking about."

( O O O )

It was another hour and a half before Sansa finally called it quits and shut the wedding binder. Gendry let the phone clatter to the counter without saying goodbye to the makeup artist on the other line before hanging up, and Arya let out a sigh of relief as she threw her pen down.

"It's about  _time_ ," she said, taking a look at Sansa. She looked impossibly tired, her face drained and pale. "You deserve a break more than any of us do. I can't believe you decided to do this all by yourself instead of just hiring a wedding planner."

Sansa gave her a look. "Please," she said, rolling her eyes. "Me, giving up control over the one day I've been looking forward to since I was a little girl? I don't think so. I'd write Willas's vows, Dad's toast, and your speech if I could."

"Well, you're still more than welcome to write my speech for me," Arya told her, standing up from her chair.

"Don't be like that, Arya. I'm sure your speech is coming along great."

"It actually is," Gendry piped up as he stretched languidly. "I read what Arya managed to write yesterday and told her to keep it."

That was a bald-faced lie. Despite the good mood Arya had been in when she began writing her speech again yesterday, it had quickly dissolved as she steadily slipped back into that eternal state of displeasure no matter what she put on paper. Even as Gendry told her that what she had was sweet, Arya still crumpled it up and threw it in the trash as she accused it of being too rehearsed.

It should've been a wonder why she woke up in such a good mood this morning, but she knew the real reason.

It was because she got to spend more time in a day with Gendry than she usually managed, and it left her feeling... _nice_.

She really needed to get a grasp on the reality of her situation.

"See? Gendry says your speech is going great. I look forward to hearing it at the wedding." Sansa began gathering her things as she stood up.

"Wait," Arya said, putting a hand on her arm to stop her. "What do you mean, hearing it at the wedding? You're not going to read it over beforehand to tell me if it's good or not?"

Sansa snorted and put the binder in her bag before zipping it shut and slinging it over her shoulder. "No," she replied like it was obvious.

"Why not?"

"Because then I wouldn't have an honest reaction to it. It would be too...rehearsed. Too fake. I want everything about it to be one hundred percent real."

"Sansa, come on—"

Sansa leaned in and kissed Arya on the cheek as a goodbye. She headed to Gendry and gave him a kiss on the cheek as well before going towards the door. "You'll be fine. Just keep working on the speech. Give it to more than one person for some extra feedback. Gendry's pretty biased, anyway, as your boyfriend."

Arya opened her mouth to continue the conversation, scrambling for a way to convince Sansa otherwise, but she cut her off before she even got a word out.

"I have to get back to Willas. We're going apartment hunting. Our lease on our apartment is almost up and we want to buy a place to be ready to move in by our first anniversary."

And with that, Sansa gave them a small wave and shut the door behind her.

The second she was out the door, Arya rounded on Gendry. "You shouldn't have lied to her about my speech," she said angrily. "If I had told her I was still struggling with it, maybe she would have stayed and helped me through it."

"That wouldn't have happened and you know it. First, she said she wanted everything to be real at the wedding. Second, she was halfway out the door anyway. Third, don't try to put this on me that you're too nervous about your speech—you need to have more faith in yourself, or else it'll never go the way either of you wants it to."

Arya squinted at him. "There you go again, giving me the psychology bullshit again."

"It's not bullshit," Gendry said as he dropped a kiss on her forehead. "It's the truth. Now, do you still want to catch a movie today or not, because I just lost a few hours of my day repeating myself to like, twenty different places and companies, and I could use some relaxation."

Arya's skin was still tingling from the kiss he'd bestowed upon her forehead, and it was distracting her from speaking.

"Um, I think I'll pass today. I'm just gonna take it easy today, but thanks. Maybe I'll come over tomorrow or something. I'll talk to you later."

Her skin didn't stop tingling for the rest of the day.

( O O O )

Arya made good on her promise and showed up at Gendry's apartment the next day with a box of pizza balanced on the palm of one of her hands, while the other hand tried to hold a large bottle of Sprite, her car keys, and her phone at the same time.

Gendry stared at her for a few seconds incredulously before Arya let out a grunt of frustration and he was put into motion. "How did you even knock?" he asked as he took the pizza box out of her hand and left the door open for her to kick closed once she'd made it inside.

"I kicked at it," Arya replied. "Did that sound like my fist knocking at your door?"

"Can't tell the difference," he admitted. "You always sound like you're about to break my door down no matter what part of your body you're using to do it."

Arya ignored the dig and waltzed into the apartment, throwing herself onto the couch and settling beside the pizza box that Gendry had placed in between the two of them. They ate together in silence, but it wasn't awkward. Arya didn't feel like she was being forced to fill every minute with cacophony, whether it was with mild conversation or making a pointless commotion. There was perhaps no other person she could sit with, in complete silence, and not feel a type of pressure on her shoulders. It was a relief to be able to sit with Gendry, eating pizza and occasionally taking sips from their cups of sodas.

Maybe that was why Gendry was the person she felt the most comfortable with, no matter what.

"You know," Gendry said after he'd finished two slices and passed the box over to Arya, who was still slowly working on her first. "I was hanging out with Jon and Robb the other day, and I don't know if there's any going back once...this is over." He waved his hand between the two of them for emphasis, and Arya looked up from the crust she was nibbling on.

She ripped off a piece and popped it in her mouth, curling her legs up under her on the couch. "Meaning?"

"Meaning that they weren't...as open as usual."

"Once again," Arya began, "meaning?"

"Well, okay, Jon was talking about how Ygritte had spent the night at his place last night—"

"Okay, I'm just going to ask you to stop right now if this story involves any kind of sex that has to do with my brother—"

"Relax," Gendry said, putting a finger to Arya's lips. "I'm just  _saying_ , that there were some points the other night where I felt like they were...distancing themselves from me. And I think it has to do with you."

Arya tried not to let that last sentence get to her, and shrugged her shoulders casually. "Well, it could have something to do with the fact that they might want to talk about whatever...stuff they do with their significant others, and you're supposed to be dating  _me_ , their younger sister. And considering that you got punched in the face by Jon a few days ago because he thought we were sleeping together when he walked in on us, they probably don't want to get involved in any kind of conversation that could lead to you speaking about that."

Gendry stayed quiet. His silence stretched on and on, and now, for the first time ever, it was starting to make Arya feel uncomfortable.

"Do you regret what we're doing?" she asked. "Because, you know, our contract says if you want to back out at any time, you're more than welcome to do it. I know it's not a legally binding contract or anything, but I won't go back on my word."

He shook his head. "No. No, that's not what I'm saying. I wouldn't go back on my word to you. Besides, there are only two weeks left until the wedding. And a few more days of pretending after that so nothing looks suspicious. It's just...weird. I mean, do you think this is weird?"

Arya could literally feel her head spinning. She wasn't entirely sure if Gendry was trying to tell her that this was a bad idea, or if he was telling her that he would just continue to go along with it. Either way, he didn't seem to be having a good time with their little arrangement, and it only made her feel sad. Sad enough that she was about to call it quits herself.

"Listen, Gendry, it sounds like you're not...feeling this whole thing. I don't want to push you into doing something you don't want to do."

He looked up at her, surprised. As if he was shocked that she had even mentioned breaking their deal. How could he be so oblivious to not see that the way he was speaking only made Arya think he was regretting signing his name next to hers?

"How did you even get that idea from what I said?" he asked.

Arya just stared at him until he finally spoke again.

"Okay," Gendry began, nodding his head, "so maybe I thought it would be different to actually do this. I wasn't expecting Jon or Robb to treat me any differently, which is completely stupid, because I've heard them say they wanted to punch Edric like, seven times. And that was when you guys were actually dating. And that's no different from how they talked about your other boyfriends, either. They've always been protective over you. It just feels weird because  _I_  know it's fake, and  _you_  know it's fake, and I forget that everyone else  _doesn't_  know it's fake. Does that make sense?"

She did understand what he was saying because Arya was feeling the same thing. She'd be texting one of her friends and Sansa would always ask if she was texting her boyfriend. Whenever she was halfway out the door, Catelyn would stop her and tell her to say hi to Gendry for her. Sometimes it took her a moment to remember that they were supposed to be dating, and she was always confused for two seconds when everyone just assumed she was always texting  _him_ , or calling  _him_ , or going out with  _him_.

But in the end, she guessed that was a good thing. A good thing, because if she wasn't losing herself in this fantasy of her and Gendry actually being together, then she wasn't losing herself in the risk of being hurt by her best friend.

( O O O )

There's a bouquet of flowers waiting for Arya when she gets downstairs the next morning.

Ned is sitting at the table, where the flowers have been put down. He's drinking coffee, very slowly, and the moment Arya comes downstairs, he puts the mug down and beckons her closer. Immediately, Arya wants to punch Gendry for whatever it was that he did. Whatever fluttery, lightheaded feeling Arya would have experienced at the sight of those pink roses had no chance of surfacing when she saw the look on her father's face.

That was probably a good thing. If Arya was being truthful with herself, even she could admit to that.

It wasn't an  _I'm about to have the sex talk with you_  kind of look. It was more like a  _We need to talk about this brand new boyfriend of yours_  kind of look. Which, honestly, Arya would rather go through the sex talk with her dad for the second time.

"Morning, Dad," Arya says wearily as she pointedly looks away from the hand that's telling her to come to sit down.

"Morning, Arya," Ned replies conversationally. "Want to come sit over here and have a talk?"

Arya turns around to face him and pretends to think about it. "You know, I would love to sit and chat, but I think Sansa might need my help with some stuff. Plus, I just woke up and all I've managed to do so far is brush my teeth. I would really love to eat breakfast."

"Well, isn't it convenient that I'm sitting at the table for you to join me?"

She hadn't just walked into that one—She'd really just damn near thrown herself right into it.

With a tight smile, Arya nodded once. "Sure. Just let me get myself some cereal." For some reason, Catelyn seemed to think her three remaining kids living at home were five years old, and always bought an abundance of cereal so they had, as she liked to put it,  _options_.

At least staring at all the colorful boxes in the pantry allowed her to waste some time as she decided what she wanted.

By the time she'd settled on a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, Ned had finished his coffee and was holding the bouquet of pink roses. Pink, not red, because Gendry had probably figured out by now that she thought they were a cliche. Not that pink was any better, but, you know. Irony.

"I found these on the doorstep this morning," Ned said, passing them over to her. Arya sat down in the seat next to the one where Ned was in at the head of the table and took the bouquet in her own hands. The plastic crackled under her fingers as she looked for the card that was sure to be there. Gendry wouldn't have sent these without putting in some message to reduce the cheesiness of the gesture.

"I already found the card," he said, holding it up. "I didn't know who they were for, so I checked."

Arya took the card out of his hands and closed her eyes.

"I do believe it says, what is it, again?" Ned asks, peering over the top of the card. " _Sorry for being a dick yesterday. I'll make up for it tonight with a surprise. Pick you up at 7:30 pm sharp. Not just my apartment again, I promise_."

Oh. So maybe this was going to be a sex talk again.

Arya tried to keep her face smooth as she set down the flowers in exchange for her spoon, and began shoveling a spoonful of Fruity Pebbles into her mouth. "You know," she observed, "I don't think I've ever heard you say the word  _dick_  before."

Ned smiled just slightly, but it faded rather quickly. "Arya, I've been...watching you this past week. Since your mother told me you were with Gendry. And as your father, I think it's my right to ask you certain...questions."

"Dad, if you're about to ask what I think you're about to ask—"

"Does he make you happy?"

Arya stopped short, the question dying on her tongue as it was halfway out of her mouth. It wasn't the question she was expecting. Not that she thought her own father wouldn't care if his daughter was happy with her boyfriend, but she couldn't remember Ned ever asking her if she was happy when she was with any of her other boyfriends. But his face was completely straight, no hint of a joke hiding in his expression, no glimpse of a second question following this one. All he did was sit there, waiting for her answer.

"What?"

"I said, does he make you happy? I've seen you with the boys you date, Arya, and I know you like to think so, but you aren't exactly talented at keeping your thoughts hidden. I could always tell if there was a problem, but now I don't know."

"Why is that a bad thing?" Arya asked.

"Because when Edric would get you upset about something, I'd see it in the way you slammed the front door on your way into the house. When he did something that made you happy, I'd see it when you kissed his cheek after he did it. When you were bored with him, you would always keep looking at him like you were waiting for him to glance at you and see that you wanted something to do. But with Gendry, I haven't been able to see any of that. And I don't know if it's because you're trying to hide that it's going in a bad direction, but I want to know."

Arya wondered how often Ned had thought about this over the past week. And those flowers, with Gendry's stupid card, must have made him believe that something actually was going wrong. But it was nothing that he could fix because this was a mess that Arya had made on her own and it was one that she needed to deal with without letting anyone know what was truly wrong. She couldn't tell her father the real issue, because the real issue was that she was only falling deeper into her feelings for Gendry that she had sworn were no longer there. The real issue was that she felt lost in his apartment when it used to be a place she would escape to, to find comfort. The real issue was that he made sure to remind her at every turn that their relationship was fake, and that nothing  _real_  would ever really come of it. And the worst part of all of that was that she couldn't even say anything about it to him because that's what they had agreed on. Gendry had sent the flowers as a joke—a gesture her family would see as romantic, but when Arya would catch sight of the card, she'd laugh about the silliness of it all. Except that's not what happened.

"I am...still new to this whole thing with Gendry," Arya started off slowly. "I'm still getting used to the idea of him as something other than my best friend. And it's an adjustment. Maybe that's why you feel like you haven't seen any emotions on my face because if you want me to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure what my emotions are right now. It's weird adjusting to this thing with him because we aren't completely sure what this thing is."

_And wasn't that the truth_ , she thought mournfully.

Ned didn't seem to find any comfort in her answer. "Arya, I'm not sure if this whole dating Gendry thing is a good idea."

"Dad, I like him, and I like him a lot, and it scares me a little," she said suddenly, and the force of her own voice shocked her.

It appeared to have shocked Ned, too. He met her eyes with surprise sparking across her face, and she knew why. She'd come home several times mentioning casually that she had a boyfriend, but never had she affirmed with such sincerity that her feelings ran deeper than everyone thought they did.

"Why does that scare you?" he asked.

Arya closed her eyes, trying to force down the voice inside her head telling her she needed to shut the hell up. If she didn't get this out, then it would eat her alive for the next month that she had to keep doing this.

"Because. I dated Edric for a year, and it was like we were going out on our first date every single time we saw each other. I've been dating Gendry for a month now, and it feels different. And I'm just not used to it."

Ned was silent, staring down at his empty coffee mug with a concentrated look on his face. He seemed to be pondering her words, replaying them again and again in his head, and Arya loved her father so much in that moment of protectiveness that she stood up and wrapped her arms loosely around his neck.

"Now," Arya said, pulling back from her hug, "I am going to put my roses in some water, text Sansa to make sure my appointment for my final dress fitting is set in place, and go have lunch with my sister so she doesn't start to really lose her mind in the midst of her final weeks as a single woman."

( O O O )

"I don't think I appreciate being your second choice," Jon said as he speared a piece of meat with his fork.

Arya shrugged her shoulders as she chewed on her own steak, not backing down from the accusing stare he sent her way. "Well, I don't appreciate you punching my boyfriend in the face, but here we are."

"So my punishment for punching Gendry in the face after walking in on him finishing sex with you is...going out to lunch with you because Sansa couldn't make it?" Jon asked in an innocent tone, quickly slapping away Arya's fork as she tried to hit him with it.

"God, would you give it a rest, already? We weren't having sex, how many times do I have to tell you that for you to believe me?" Arya groaned. She was getting sick of the piercing look Jon always gave her when she saw him as if he could tell whether or not she had sex just by staring resolutely at her.

"Sorry, Arya, but I've been friends with Gendry a lot longer than you've been dating him. I know a thing or two about how he works with girls he dates."

Was that anger she detected in his voice? Arya quickly jumped on a chance to rectify whatever argument could follow before it had the chance to explode into an all-out fight in the middle of a steakhouse.

"And you've been my brother for a hell of a lot longer than you've been friends with him. So, by that logic, you should know by now that if I sleep with someone, I don't care enough about your opinion to hide it from you. That being said, I'm not going to shout it from the rooftops, but if I tell you I didn't do anything, you should have the decency to, believe me, thank you very much."

Jon didn't have the decency to believe her when she insisted on something the first time, but at least he had the decency to flush with embarrassment when she told him off yet again about his overreaction.

"Okay, so maybe he didn't deserve to be punched—"

" _Maybe_?"

"He literally asked me to punch him, Arya."

"No one ever said Gendry was smart. I think we both know that your best friend is an idiot at this point and there's nothing we can do about that."

"Um, he's your boyfriend. Accept the fact that you're dating an idiot, and that's far worse than him being my best friend."

"I reject that logic."

"Because you know I'm right?"

"Because you're being just as much of an idiot as Gendry is."

Jon's mouth dropped. "Take that back. I've never heard you compare someone's idiocy to the likes of Gendry."

"Well, there's a first time for everything."

"And when, exactly, was yours and Gendry's?"

" _Jon_!"

"Can you blame me for trying to use rapid conversation to get you to admit to the thing that I am still one hundred percent convinced happened before I walked in on you guys in his apartment?"

Arya smiled pityingly at him and patted his arm comfortingly. "It was a good effort, but I'm not about to spill all of my relationship secrets to you. Sorry." Somehow, even when she had no relationship to keep secrets about, she still had plenty of things to hide.

The whole thing was maddening. By the end of it, Arya was sure she would be emptying out the bottle of Advil Catelyn kept in her medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

"You should  _want_  to tell me all of your secrets," Jon countered. "I'm your big brother."

"It just sounds like you listed yet another reason why I  _shouldn't_  tell you all of my secrets."

"So you admit that there are secrets you're keeping?"

Arya cocked her head to one side, looking closely at Jon for a few moments before leaning back in her chair. "Of course I am," she said as easily as possible, pushing a cherry tomato around her plate with her fork. She didn't care about the rave reviews this restaurant got—this pathetic salad they'd put on the side of her steak wasn't doing a thing for her.

"You never used to keep secrets from me before," Jon observed. "Before, when you were dating Edric or even that dancer guy, you told me stuff."

"The  _dancer guy_  had a name, and it was Daniel," Arya said. "And if you think I told you everything, you're wrong."

"You didn't tell me everything?" Jon sounded genuinely hurt, the shock of hearing this coming through his voice.

Arya bit her lip. "Did you think I did? The only reason you're asking questions and doubting me now is that this is Gendry and you're actually his friend."

"What does that have to do with anything? I'm asking because I know something else is going on."

"No, you're asking because you're paranoid. And you're paranoid because Gendry told you all about his old girlfriends or whatever they were—and don't give me that look, I know about all of them. And now he's not. So you're suspicious."

Jon folded his arms and squinted his eyes at her as if he could detect any lies coming from her just by staring at her.

"You know," he said after a few beats of tense silence, "you're more perceptive than people give you credit for."

Arya shrugged, feeling like that was becoming her default reaction to everything these days, and took a sip of water. "That's not the first time I've heard that from someone." She winked at Jon from across the table and smiled at him.

( O O O )

"Who sent flowers?"

Arya looked over her shoulder at her nightstand, where the pink roses sat in a vase she'd borrowed from her mother's collection. "Hello, Sansa," she greeted.

"Hello, Arya." Sansa leaned in and kissed Arya on the cheek before walking into her room and sitting down in the chair by her dresser. "Who sent flowers?"

"Why are you asking when you already know the answer?"

"Because I don't know the answer. As far as I know, Gendry Waters doesn't have a romantic bone in his body."

"Well, that's a lie. He's extremely romantic."

Sansa's eyebrows rose, her interest piqued. "Oh?  _How_  romantic?"

Arya gave Sansa a look and shook her head mockingly as she sat down on her bed, crossing her legs in a pretzel. "Don't try that on me. I already have Jon down my throat because he's convinced we're sleeping together," she said.

"Oh, yeah. I heard about the whole...punching thing," Sansa said, waving her hand across her face for emphasis.

"At least there's no real mark. It was just red for a little bit."

"Aw, you helped him heal from his wounds afterward?" Sansa crooned.

Arya sighed. "Yeah, and I had to use a Ziploc bag filled with ice cubes because he doesn't even have frozen peas or anything like that. His freezer is basically empty—it's sad."

"Oh, is your relationship already at the stage of you pushing him to eat what you tell him, do what you say, and act how you like?"

Arya looked over at her sister with raised eyebrows and scoffed. "Why are you in such a... _sassy_  mood today? Did you magically go up a size overnight and your wedding dress doesn't fit anymore?"

Sansa fixed Arya with her own dark look. "Um, that's not even funny as a joke, Arya. This is serious. My  _wedding_  is not some kind of joke you can laugh at whenever you feel like, or whenever I get tense about something and you decide to crack a joke about how I'm turning into Bridezilla or whatever mean nickname you come up with in that endless arsenal of yours—"

"Woah,  _Sansa_ ," Arya said, standing up from her bed and walking over to her sister. She put her hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet her eyes. "Relax. I'm not making jokes. But after your rather impressive rant, you can't blame me for asking—is everything actually okay? Or are you just getting nervous because the wedding is coming up sooner than you thought?"

Sansa opened her mouth and made a few false starts to a reply, but no sound came out.

"I just—" she choked out, but then cut herself off as she looked down at her feet. Arya waited as patiently as she could for her go on. "The wedding is in February," Sansa said finally, monotonously.

Arya waited for her to continue, but no other words came out of her mouth. "Okay, the wedding is in February," she repeated after two minutes of silence from Sansa. Sansa looked up at her but she didn't speak, so Arya pulled her to feet and brought her over to the bed. "The wedding is in February," Arya said again. "What's so bad about that?"

It was the question that broke the dam, and all of Sansa's words came out in a sudden rush like water bursting through. "It's just...it's February, and it's so cold outside. What was I thinking? People will be freezing, and then the whole wedding will be ruined because if everyone is too cold, then they won't be dancing, and if they don't dance, then everyone is just sitting in their seats, and that means no one is having a good time because  _everyone_  knows that the only time you're supposed to sit down at the wedding is when you're eating or making toasts, or else it means no one is having a good time."

It was the outburst Arya had been waiting for. Too long, Sansa had pushed down all of her worries about this. Honestly, she was relieved it was coming out now, even though it was happening a bit closer to the special day than she had thought it would.

"Okay, Sansa," she started, sitting down on the bed and crossing her legs again. "The Plaza has a heating system. And I can guarantee that everyone will be dancing because you guys got the best band, but I don't think this is about the month you chose, is it?"

Sansa looked up at Arya from under her lashes, her head still bowed low. "I don't want to make a mistake I'm going to regret for the rest of my life," she whispered, and Arya opened her mouth immediately to shut that idea down, but Sansa cut her off before a word escaped her lips. "I've been sure of Willas for so long, but it was like he proposed out of  _nowhere_ , and we planned the wedding so fast—"

"Sansa, where is all of this coming from? Why  _now_?"

She finally lifted her head and met Arya's eyes. "We got into a fight yesterday," she said, her voice lowering considerably as if it was a shameful secret to admit. "About the wedding. And I walked out. I slept at Margaery's last night."

Arya's eyes widened, but she tried to keep her reactions under control. It would do no help to Sansa if she overreacted. "Why were you guys fighting about the wedding last night?" she asked.

"He told me that I was trying to make it too big. Too  _much_ , he said. He told me that it was like I was trying to throw it in everyone's faces that even though I wasn't with the person I had dated for so many years, I could still have my happily ever after, and make all the guests jealous of me at the same time."

"Sansa, that's—"

"No, Arya, he's  _right_. From the beginning, I've told everyone I just want Willas, but I want to show everyone how happy I am, too. No one...no one else knows about what happened when Joffrey and I were together. And that's more than fine; it's not anyone's business but my own. I told other people because I thought they had a right to know. But everyone else thinks our relationship just fell apart and the way that I...closed myself off for months after, they all thought I was broken over it. And I want them to see how  _un_ broken I am. I want them all to see how I got it all in the end."

Arya sat back, pushing herself up the bed so she could lean against her headboard as she looked closely at Sansa. "Sansa, that's not...that's not something to be ashamed of. I've never seen a person as angry as you be so...kind at the same time. And don't try to deny it, Sansa, you are  _angry_ , and you have every right to be. But you've put all of that anger into turning yourself into a better person than what he made you feel like you were. If anyone deserves to be angry...it's you."

Sansa had tears in her eyes, but she looked like she was trying her hardest to keep them from falling.

"I just...I don't want him to think that that is the only reason I agreed to marry him. Because...I've never felt that kind of love for someone. It's like he was there at the worst time in my life for a reason."

Arya sighed and sat up. "So maybe you should be telling that to him instead of me. Tell him everything you just told me. I've seen a lot of relationships, Sansa, but I've never seen one like yours with Willas. Mom and Dad, Jon and Ygritte, Robb and Jeyne...they don't have the same kind of bond that you guys do. Not after the way he helped you for so long."

"You really think that?"

Arya snorted, causing Sansa to laugh once, the sound getting stuck in her throat through the tears that still hadn't fallen yet. "Are you kidding? I wish someone would care about me the way Willas cares about you."

"What, Gendry doesn't care about you?" Sansa asked. "I know you guys haven't been going out for a long time, but you've been friends for years."

Arya froze and looked down at her blanket. "He does," she said, wanting to kick herself for making such a stupid mistake. "But not...I mean, you guys are  _in love_."

Sansa laughed. "Arya, I hate to break it to you, but I think Gendry's half in love with you if he isn't already. You should have seen the way he was looking at you when I made him help me with those phone calls. You had your head down the entire time, but every time he had to wait on hold, or someone hung up, he'd go right back to looking at you."

Arya shook her head rapidly. "No, he's not that kind of—"

"What? Not that kind of guy? The kind who likes to look at the girl he's dating."

"Just because he looks at me doesn't mean he's in love with me," Arya said, shrugging her shoulders and leaning back against her headboard again to bring her knees up close to her chest. "Trust me, we...we definitely aren't  _there_  yet. We aren't at that point right now."

"Yeah, well, that point may come a lot sooner than you think," Sansa told her meaningfully.

"I'm sorry, do you have a handbook for this?" Arya asked sarcastically.

Sansa rolled her eyes and shrugged. "There's no such thing as a handbook when it comes to loving someone, or even liking someone. There are no rules, there are no steps, and there definitely isn't a specific step by step process describing how it's all gotta go down. You just have to kind of make it up as you go along."

"Is that you and Willas did?" Arya asked quietly, almost shyly like she was afraid to ask that question.

Sansa looked over at Arya and, after a few hesitant beats, she nodded. "Yeah. That's exactly what we did. We just made everything up as we dated. We didn't decide when would be the appropriate time to tell other people outside our families when we were dating, we didn't talk about when we would...sleep together for the first time, we didn't discuss marriage before he asked me to be his wife. Everything we did just kind of came along naturally, and I know you think some of those things are big steps that you have to discuss first, but Willas and I have always been on the same page with these things. We somehow always knew it was the right time."

"You've always been on the same page?"

"Yeah. Kind of like how you and Gendry are somehow always in sync, even when you guys aren't even in the same place."

Arya stayed quiet, still staring at her blanket as she took in Sansa's words. If she was to be believed, which there was no reason she shouldn't be believed, then Gendry was looking at her. No big deal, but...there was a part of Arya's brain that was just aching to know what he thought when he did look at her. A part of her that desperately wanted to know if he was thinking about her in the same way she thought of him.

"I'm...I'm really happy for you, Arya," Sansa continued, not realizing that Arya was going through what she believed to be a midlife crisis at the tender age of twenty-three. "You deserve to be with someone who cares about you as much as Gendry does."

She couldn't take it anymore. "Yeah, but I'm not sure if we're going to last," she blurted out. As soon as the words were out there in the open, she wanted to grab them and shove them back down her throat.

Sansa's eyebrows rose and she blinked once. Twice. "What do you mean, you don't think you're going to last?"

"I just...I just don't think this is going to work out. Me and Gendry, we aren't...going to work out."

"Look, Arya, now  _I'm_  not sure what you're saying, and I definitely don't know what's going on in your own private life or your relationship with him, but I...I want this to work out for you. I'm not saying you have to marry him and become his wife and have his babies or anything like that, but it's only been a month. Actually, I don't count the time you kept it a secret from all of us. It's been, like, a week since your relationship has actually been known to people, and I know everyone is giving you shit for it because it's new and it's sudden, but we all think Gendry's been pretty good for you. You can...completely ignore my advice right now and break up with him if there are certain aspects of your relationship that I don't know about and I respect your boundaries enough not to ask. But I'm not the only one who thinks you guys are surprisingly good together."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I was talking to Robb the other day, and he said Gendry was different. Like he had less of a weight on his shoulders.

It didn't make any  _sense_. He didn't like her, he made sure to point that out to her plenty of times to let her know what was what. But Sansa was saying something completely different...Arya knew that she shouldn't listen to it because, really, nobody knew the full story, but hearing all of this only made her feel like she was somehow lighter and heavier at the same time. Like the thought of Gendry truly liking her as much as she liked him made her feel like she could walk on air but the reality of what she knew to be true just added a weight onto her own shoulders.

For all she knew, Robb could be noticing an easier side to Gendry because he was relieved he didn't have to worry about a date to the wedding for himself, or maybe it was that he felt good about doing something nice for Arya. She didn't know the truth, and normally, Arya would have no problem asking for the truth without any preamble, but this was different. This was  _Gendry_. And that only made it worse because usually, that would mean to nothing to her. It wouldn't stop her from asking him to tell him what he really thought, or felt, but this was her own heart she was playing with. These were her own feelings she was messing with just by thinking about this, and she needed to put a stop to it. As soon as possible.

She looked back at the flowers sitting on her nightstand, the stems submerged in water. In just a few days, those flowers very well might be dead. She thought of the card, of Gendry telling her that he was picking her up at 7:30 sharp. When he said sharp, he meant it. No earlier, no later.

"Arya?" Sansa called her name, waving a hand in front of her face. "Arya? You blanked out for a few minutes there. Are you okay? What were you thinking about?"

She blinked a few times as she brought herself back to the conversation. "Oh. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I was just...thinking."

"About what?"

Arya paused, took a deep breath. Another one. "I have a date to get ready for."

( O O O )

Sansa had put off talking to Willas about their fight for another hour to help Arya prepare for whatever Gendry had planned for them. One text to him had confirmed that they would be going out on a real date and that she should dress a little nicer, but there was no need to wear a dress or anything  _too_ fancy. Arya didn't want to think about their contract explicitly stating no public dates, but she still felt her palms sweat as she watched Sansa root through her closet.

"Here," she said, finally coming out with a hanger in her had. "You can wear this." She held out the hanger to Arya, who took it from her hands. It was a loose-fitting black lace halter top with an asymmetrical hem that Arya had never seen before in her life.

"Where did this shirt come from?" she asked, holding it up in front of her. The price tag was still hanging on the inside of the shirt. She didn't remember buying this shirt at all.

"I think that was Margaery's birthday present to you this year, wasn't it?" Sansa asked. She had disappeared back into the closet, looking through all of Arya's bottoms. While Arya had a nice collection of clothes, it was nothing on Sansa's, and it only took a few minutes of rummaging for her to appear in front of the door glaring at her sister.

"Do you own nothing nice at all?" she asked accusingly.

"Um, hey. I own plenty of nice things," Arya defended, casting a glance at her closet. It did look incredibly...black. And plain. "I have that nice dress I wore last time."

"Yeah, and it somehow ended up on Gendry's couch and you wearing his sweats. You're not wearing that dress again, especially not after just one week since you've worn it."

Arya tried to defend herself again, but Sansa just grabbed her hand and pulled her into her old room. "Here. You can borrow some of the stuff I left here after I moved out."

Arya started. "I didn't know you still had clothes here—"

"Obviously. Willas and I couldn't find an apartment with a closet big enough. That's why we're looking to find something bigger to buy so we can hire contractors to make something a bit more special for me." She smiled dreamily, though Arya had to resist the urge to laugh at what her sister was going to be doing with her new home. "He says it's his wedding gift to me."

"Well," Arya said as she began sifting through piles of Sansa's pants, organized by color, "I hope you two are very happy together. And in case you were curious, I meant you and your closet."

"Ha ha. Very funny. You're hilarious. Let me know when you drop your next Netflix comedy special so I can add it to my queue." Sansa let out a noise of relief and pulled something out. "Here! These are perfect!"

Arya wasn't one for admitting when she was wrong, but even she couldn't deny that her sister knew how to pick out clothes.

She was holding a pair of tapered pants that were dyed a bright red. They had a high waist with a tie belt looping through the waist and it looked like there were deep pockets. If Arya was being honest with herself, it would go perfectly with the top Sansa had managed to dig out of her closet. And by the smug look on her face, she knew that she had managed to find the perfect ensemble for her to wear.

Arya took the pants out of Sansa's hands. "It'll do," she said simply, already starting to change.

Sansa rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. You love the outfit and you know it. I don't know why you always refuse to take me up on my offer to go shopping with you. God knows I ask you to come along at least once a week. It would do you good to wear something other than the color black every once in a while. You might even buy something gray."

"Funny," Arya replied, throwing the shirt over her head and looking in the mirror as she put the outfit on.

"Aren't I hilarious?" Sansa quipped back.

"Yeah, let me know when  _your_  Netflix comedy special is on so I know that I should ignore it."

Sansa let out an indignant noise. "Just for that, I should refuse to do your hair for you."

Arya paused. "I haven't even asked you to do my hair for me yet."

"Yes, but you were going to."

"No, I wasn't."

"Arya. You just said you hadn't asked me to do your hair for you  _yet_."

"...Please do my hair for me, Sansa."

Sansa let out a resigned sigh. "Sit yourself down."

( O O O )

"You look really nice, Arya," Gendry said as Arya climbed into the car an hour later, her hair artfully arranged by Sansa in a purposefully messy-looking fishtail braid that had been thrown over the leather jacket she slipped into so she didn't get cold outside.

"Thanks," she said, her breath puffing out in front of her like a smoke cloud. She shut the door and buckled her seat belt, feeling her heart beat faster than usual as they sat together in the car.

"So you have no guesses on where I'm taking you tonight?"

" _Well_ ," Arya said, turning the heater towards her and putting her hands up. "I'm going to just take a wild guess and say we're going back to your apartment because I'm pretty sure our contract explicitly states no public dates. But you should know that already, considering you not only helped me come up with that rule and later signed your name under it, but we also went over this last week when you tried to break the exact same rule before."

"Okay, fair enough," Gendry amended as he started driving. "But this isn't a date. It's not, I swear," he said when Arya gave him a look. "I just sent that card over with the roses to make it look like it was a date. But this." He waved a hand between them. "This is just a dinner between friends."

She was taken aback. Just the two of them, actually going to dinner? And yet, he was still saying they were doing it as just friends.

"If this is just a thing between two people who are just friends," Arya said carefully, "then why bother? Why not do what we agreed on from the very beginning and just...go to your place, or catch a movie or something? You sent the flowers, my dad saw them, he questioned me, Sansa saw them, Jon was told about them and he let me know it when we had lunch earlier today. You got your message across. Why bother with an actual dinner?"

Was she imagining the look of panic in his eyes, or was it real? Was she starting to see things that weren't really there, or was Gendry actually  _floundering_  for an answer? Was it just her mind playing tricks on her to make her think she was seeing what she wanted to see?

"Because. I don't treat you enough."

"You don't—what? You don't  _treat me_  enough?"

"No. You're my best friend, and I always make you hole up in my pathetic little apartment and eat Chinese food or pizza and drink shitty beer."

"But...I like holing up in your apartment and eating Chinese food and pizza and...well, I don't drink your shitty beer, but I do make a pretty decent margarita. And your apartment is a far cry from pathetic, Gendry. I'd say you've done rather well for yourself."

She  _definitely_ wasn't imagining the way he smiled with pride when she said that.

"Thanks. But it doesn't change the fact that we always do the same thing at the same time on the same day of the week. And we've been doing it forever. It's time I did something nice for you for once. Friends are supposed to treat each other, you know?"

"I'm sorry, is this your way of hinting to me that you want me to start taking you out to fancy dinners just because you're my friend?"

"No, although I have no doubt that you could afford a much nicer dinner than what we're about to have. I just want to be nice for a night."

"And it took pretending to be my boyfriend to help you finally realize that you were being a bit lazy when it came to thinking of things for us to do when we want to hang out together?"

"Precisely." He clapped his hand on her knee, and Arya had to force herself to do anything except tense up. She knew that if she did that, then he would pull his hand back, apologize for crossing some boundary that did not exist in any way, shape, or form, and then it would never happen again.

But she wanted his hand there so badly, so she stayed still. God, she was wearing pants and she could somehow still feel the heat of his palm through the material. It didn't seem like his hand was sweaty or anything, but he was holding her knee. It felt nice, privately intimate, something that no one passing by their car on the road would be able to see through the window, but they both knew it was happening.

She really needed to stop this.

"So, Sansa was over today," she said, just to have something to say.

"Yeah, I figured," Gendry said, pointing to her hair. "I know how hopeless you are with your hair. There's no way you could have managed that."

"Shut up. I'm speaking. And you said you were going to be nice for a night. So treat your girlfriend with respect."

"You're right. I send my deepest apologies, my lady. Please, continue. You were saying Sansa was at your humble abode."

Arya glowered at him. "I am not above punching you while you're still driving. I will take us both down if it means getting to punch you."

"I'll file a report of an abusive relationship."

"Oh, but then you'd have to admit we were never in a relationship when they put you on the stand under oath, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God."

Gendry opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Eventually, he coughed out a laugh and shook his head, a smile spreading on his face. "How'd you come up with that so fast?" he asked.

"It's not that hard to come up with ways to outsmart you on the spot. You're just that stupid."

"Um, I take offense."

"You can keep your offense as long as I get to finish what I was saying before you rudely interrupted me."

"Arya, that doesn't even make any sense—okay, okay, just finish your story."

"So, Sansa was over today and she told me that she got into a fight with Willas."

"Oh." Gendry frowned. "I hope it wasn't a serious one. Is everything okay? Are  _they_  okay?"

"No, I think they'll be fine. We had a talk about...them. And their relationship. It made me realize something."

Gendry was silent for a second longer than normal. "Oh? And what did you realize throughout this conversation?"

"I realized that it would be nice...to have someone care enough to fight with me the way they do with each other. They don't...they don't fight just to  _fight_. They fight because there's an underlying issue and they want to solve it before it gets out of hand too quickly and then there's nothing they can do to stop it. I think...I think that would be a nice thing to have."

Gendry nodded, his mouth set in a tight line.

"I think maybe that's what I'll start looking for. After this is all over, you know. The wedding, and...this."

And there it was. Her cards spread out on the table. As clear as she could force herself to be. All Gendry had to do was take this as a sign, take it as a hint to make the next move, the  _final_  move, and make whatever this was between them a real, solid thing.

He started to speak, but couldn't finish anything after "I think." He paused for a few seconds, the quiet humming from the heater's vents the only sound in the car. "I think," he started again, "that that's...a good idea. Maybe, you know, the person you're looking for is closer than you might think."

Maybe, Arya thought, she was starting to believe in signs of her own.


	4. Eavesdropper

Jon was looking at Arya with something like hurt in his eyes. Betrayal was clearly written all over his face. "You could have told me," he said. "You could have told me that it was all for pretend, but...you just lied about it all."

Arya bit her lip, trying not to panic. Gendry, standing right next to her with his hand still clasped around her wrist, was staring at Jon with wide eyes, looking like he couldn't properly comprehend the scene that was unfolding before his very eyes. Arya wasn't even sure if she was taking it in herself. There was no way this was happening, no way that Jon was standing in front of them, telling them that he knew about their fake relationship. There was no way that he was watching them with  _distrust_.

"Jon," she said. "It's not a big deal."

"You lied to us. It is a big deal. I—oh, my God I punched Gendry in the face!"

"It's fine," Gendry said automatically. "Water under the bridge."

"Not for me," he said firmly, his eyes set steadily on Arya.

It was probably the meanest thing he'd ever said to her in her entire life.

"Jon, come on. It's not that serious. So what if I pretended to be dating him? I wasn't going to find a date, and he needed one also—"

"But you didn't tell  _me_."

"...I couldn't tell anyone," Arya said softly.

"Because you didn't think you could trust me to keep a stupidly small secret like this?"

"It's not a stupidly small secret, Jon! It's...It's a big deal, you know, with the whole wedding and everything. Mom and Sansa were putting the pressure on, just to get me to find a stupid date. I couldn't let them down—"

"No, it would be a big deal for Sansa. It would be a big deal for Catelyn. But did you think I would have cared?"

Arya shrugged her shoulders helplessly, looking down to avoid the hurt in Jon's eyes. "You two are the ones who turned it into some...big torrid secret. None of us would have cared. In fact, Sansa and Catelyn probably would have even gone along with it if you told them."

No. No, that wasn't true. That couldn't be true. Arya had spent every waking moment since Gendry texted her that first night thinking of the best way to keep this all under everyone's radar. Because she  _knew_ , she knew that if they heard she was just taking Genry as her date for the night, Sansa would have thrown a fit over it. Catelyn would have shaken her head in disappointment. Ned would have sighed in resignation because she didn't want to put herself  _out there_  to find another date. If she would have told them, they would be reacting the same way Jon was reacting—making a big deal out of nothing, making it sound like she had done it to purposefully keep secrets from them all.

But that wasn't right, either. Jon wasn't overreacting at all because he was  _right_. If Arya wanted to be honest with herself, more honest than she had been for the past two weeks, then she would have admitted that she never had to fake a relationship with Gendry just to please her sister. If she said she was just bringing Gendry along as a date for the wedding, they probably would have helped her save face if any guests kept asking prying questions. But then Gendry had brought up the idea—no, that wasn't right, either. Gendry had suggested they go to the wedding together, but Arya had mentioned a relationship first. She had been the one to say it would work better if  _everyone_  thought they were dating, including her whole family. Gendry may have come up with all the details, but he gave Arya complete control over their ground rules.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. But, Jon, you have to promise—you have to  _promise me_  that you won't tell anyone what you know."

Jon scoffed in disbelief. He was shocked that she would doubt him, even now. Just because he was angry that she kept it from him, her panic had immediately made her jump to the worst possible conclusion and assume that he would run and tell everyone it was all a lie. She felt like crap. She tried to take a step forward, but Jon was already leaving the apartment.

"Don't worry," he said, walking out of Gendry's room and going towards the front door. "Your secret is safe with me. It always would have been, but what's done is done. I'll see you guys later."

The door shut behind him with a slamming sound too loud in the emptiness of the apartment.

( THREE DAYS BEFORE JON FOUND OUT )

"I think I want to tell someone," Arya said one afternoon, picking at a large piece of sesame chicken that was drowning in thick sauce. She was looking down at the plastic plate that was full with a bunch of random food items that she'd dumped on it, so she didn't get to see Gendry's reaction, but as she stabbed the piece of chicken and took a bite from it, she heard it.

"Are you crazy?" he asked.

Arya looked up at him from her half-eaten piece of chicken and raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"No, it's just...well, you're the one who made the rules. You're the one who insisted that neither of us should be allowed to tell other people. I wanted to, but then you wrote on the contract, so I just did it so we'd be even—"

"I know what I wrote on the contract," Arya said. "But do you really think Jon would even care?"

Gendry shrugged as he twirled some lo mein on his fork. "I don't see why you shouldn't be able to tell him. But then he would have punched me in vain...oh, well. Tell him if you want."

Arya paused. "You don't care?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders once more and shook his head. "Nope," he said once he swallowed his bite of food. "I mean, I don't really see what the big deal is, but yeah. If you want to go tell him, then why should I stop you?"

"But...but the contract—"

"Oh, come on, Arya. It's hardly a legally binding contract. You wrote it on a piece of loose leaf paper with a black pen. Just because you made sure your handwriting was as neat as possible, doesn't mean it's a legitimate contract."

Arya frowned as she looked back down at her plate of food, while Gendry stood up to get himself something to drink. Did that mean he would want to tell someone since he had just given her free reign to do the same thing? It would be hypocritical of her to say no. But now she was thinking that she didn't even want to tell Jon. Because if she told Jon, then that would be admitting to someone outside of her and Gendry that it wasn't real.

And if Gendry chose to tell someone because she was doing it...then he was admitting to someone else that it wasn't real."

"Arya."

"Hm? What?"

"I asked you like three times if you wanted some iced tea. What were you thinking about?"

"Oh...sorry. Sure, I'll take some iced tea, thanks." She accepted the cup with a tight smile. "I was just...you know. Thinking about...well, maybe I won't tell Jon, after all."

Gendry raised one eyebrow. "What changed your mind in the past half a minute?

She shrugged her shoulders. "I just...don't think it would be a good idea. We should probably just keep it as a secret."

( O O O )

It's a long while before Arya manages to fall asleep that night. She kept tossing and turning, feeling like a small child throwing herself around her big bed. All she could do was just stare at her ceiling in the dark, trying her hardest not to look at the numbers that were steadily changing on her clock. If she pushed herself, really pushed herself, she would throw her pride away and forget whatever feelings she felt for Gendry, and just call everything off right now.

It wouldn't be a big deal. She might get a comment from Sansa before she went on to comfort her sister post breakup, but other than that, there would be no lasting consequences. Even though she knew Robb and Jon would question her incessantly about whether or not Gendry hurt her in any way, once they saw them acting completely normal, even they would let it all go.

But the thing was...Arya herself didn't want to let this go. Not one bit. She had spent most of her younger years liking Gendry enough that she tried to hide from him when he was over the house. It took so long to get over those feelings, and she thought they were gone forever. And then he'd texted her that fateful night, and the next thing she knew, she was negotiating terms with him on a contract. A contract that meant nothing to either of them, but still. She could pull it out right now and she'd see it: Gendry's signature, shaky from disuse, right next to Arya's dramatically looping signature.

Every excuse in the entire world came in and out of her head that night as Arya tried to go to sleep. Every reason possible to  _not_  text Gendry right now that she was ripping up their contract. She'd gotten so good at fooling herself that if she wasn't so unsure of herself right now, she'd probably believe it.

Everyone had gotten so used to Gendry being her boyfriend over the past two weeks. Even Sansa said they all thought they were good together. She said they made each other  _better_. She said...she had said that Gendry kept looking at her, making sure she was happy, making sure she was having a good time. Jon, after he got his stupid punch out of the way, had even accepted Gendry as not just his friend, but as Arya's boyfriend. Ned was happy that  _she_  was happy.

Only she wasn't happy. She wasn't happy at all—she was just  _confused_. Confused because she didn't know what to do about Gendry, or what to do about her own feelings. There were times when she thought to herself that he actually did like her back, times when he would brush a piece of her hair back affectionately even when there wasn't anyone around to see the gesture. Times when he would lean in and kiss her, but his lips would linger close to hers just a few seconds more, or when he settled in next to her in a seat or on the couch and he'd throw his arm around her shoulders like it was so  _common_. Not to mention the throwaway comments he sometimes uttered, like what he'd said in the car the other day about the person meant to be with her being closer than she originally thought. Or like two days ago, when they had been sitting in her room and Ned and come in to jokingly tell them to keep the door open, and Gendry had waited until he was gone to tell Arya he wouldn't even think of doing anything with her in a house so packed he wouldn't be able to take his time.

Just thinking about that comment made her shiver, even while she wore her warmest pajamas and hugged her blanket close to her.

Did that mean he had... _thought_  about her in that way? Not in just a romantic way, but in a more intimate way? Could that even be possible? The thought sent both excited and nervous chills down her spine. God knows she had spent more than enough time thinking about him in that way these past two weeks.

With a whimper of pure helplessness, Arya grabbed her pillow out from under her head and covered her face with it. She had half a mind to try screaming into it, but she doubted that would do any good.

All she could do now...

All she could do now was wait for the pieces to fall where they were supposed to. She thought to herself the other night, sitting in Gendry's car, that she might even start believing in signs of her own.

Maybe now it was time to start putting her faith in them wholeheartedly.

( TWO DAYS BEFORE JON FOUND OUT )

The sound of her alarm clock wakes her up after what feels like approximately three consecutive minutes of sleep. Arya, who had resorted to spreading herself out on her bed like a starfish right in the middle of the mattress, face-down with her head buried in her pillows, let out a frustrated shriek that almost matched the ungodly noises emanating from her alarm clock.

She sits up, partially blinded by the pieces of hair that had managed to stick to her face and cover several parts of her vision, and scrambles to reach for the alarm clock. She slams one hand down on the button right in the middle of its trilling and uses her other hand to rip her hair out of her face, spitting it away from her mouth and trying her hardest to get it under control. Stumbling into the bathroom, she got a good look at herself in the mirror, and almost started crying right there from the exhaustion, frustration, and lack of sleep.

In plain English, and in simplest terms, she looked like a mess. Her hair, too long and too hard to maintain, was sticking up in random places while it was matted to her head in others, really needed to be cut.

Not as short as she used to keep it in high school when it was a severely cut bob that rested right by her chin, but this morning, she looked more like a lion than anything else.

Quickly brushing her teeth and trying her best to run a brush through the tangled mess of her hair, Arya left the bathroom and changed into a pair of sweats and a tank top, fully intending to spend her day relaxing and doing nothing but watch movies on Netflix in order to avoid addressing any of the problems currently warring over prevalence in her mind.

Catelyn was standing in the kitchen when she got downstairs, making herself eggs for breakfast.

"Morning, Mom."

"Morning. Got anything planned for the day?"

Arya shook her head and took out a bowl of for some cereal. "Nope. I finally have a day to myself where I don't have to do anything."

"Sounds like fun."

Arya grinned at her mother. "I'm sure I'm going to have lots of fun while I laze my whole day away in the comfort of my own home."

"Well," Catelyn said, turning off the fire for the stove and sliding her eggs onto a clean plate with a toasted bagel already prepared on it, "don't get too used to it. Because we have our final fittings for our dresses coming up tomorrow, and you don't want Sansa to have your head for showing up at the store late."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Arya promised. "Hey, Mom?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I should cut my hair?"

Catelyn starts in surprise, quirking one eyebrow. "I don't know. I never did like the way your hair was when you were a freshman in high school—"

"Mom, I was fifteen and going through a 'phase'. But don't you think it's getting too long?"

"I don't know. Sansa's hair is longer than yours and her hair looks gorgeous."

"Sansa also looks a lot more feminine than I do, and long hair looks better on her."

"Then maybe you should cut it. Not a lot, though—you looked almost like a boy when it was so short."

Arya tapped her spoon against the side of her bowl, mulling over the thought as she chewed her cereal.

"I don't think I'll spend my day lazing around the house after all," she announced.

Two hours later, she walked out of the hair salon with her hair three and a half inches shorter than it used to be, just brushing her shoulder blades. She felt like her head was at least five pounds lighter than it was when she had woken up this morning.

Sansa would probably shriek in surprise when she saw how she'd cut her hair, and she'd most definitely say something about how it would affect the hairstyle she had in mind for Arya to wear at her wedding, but as Arya caught a glimpse of herself through the reflection of a store window she passed by, she ran her hand through her hair and smiled to herself.

It actually looked pretty great.

Maybe this could be one of the changes she'd start working on in her life.

( O O O )

" _Woah_. Your hair..."

"It's shorter, I know," Arya said breezily, pushing past Gendry and walking into his apartment like it was her own. "It's not  _short_  short, but I think it's nice. I got it done today, you know, as a way to piss off Sansa right before her wedding," she joked as she took her seat in her usual bar stool and began slowly spinning around it mindlessly.

"What brought on the change?"

"Just thought that I would try to mix things up a bit in my life."

"And you thought your hair was the right place to start?"

Arya looked over at him as Gendry took the bar stool across from her, leaning his elbows on the counter that separated them. "Are you trying to suggest that my life has several areas in need of some mixing up that are more serious than what I choose to do with my  _hair_?"

"No, shut up and stop being so dramatic," he retorted, rolling his eyes. "I...I like it."

She touched the ends self-consciously. "You do?"

"Yeah. It looks better like this. Not as short as you used to keep it, but when it was as long as it was before...I don't know, it wasn't you."

She smiled to herself happily. Was she supposed to take that as a sign that he liked specific things she wore, or that there were certain styles she tried that Gendry noticed, and actually liked more than others? She spun a piece of hair around her pinky finger absentmindedly as she thought it over, winding it tight and releasing it before doing it again. "Thanks. I think it suits me better like this, too. Long hair is Sansa's thing, not mine. I'm no Rapunzel. But, as my mother so eagerly reminded me earlier today, I used to look almost like a boy when I was in my early years of high school, and I'm not trying to recreate that look again." Arya laughed lightly at the thought.

Gendry laughed with her, shaking his head. "No, it wasn't that bad. You didn't look like a boy. At least, not to me, you didn't. I thought you looked kind of cute with the short hair."

Arya froze and looked up at him from under her eyelashes, not daring to pick her head up from where she kept it bowed towards the counter. She didn't trust herself to speak without sounding like a high-pitched twelve-year-old boy before puberty.

"You thought I was cute when I looked like a boy?" she asked finally.

Gendry snorted. "I just said I didn't think you looked like a boy. God, do you ever even listen to me?" He tutted at her mockingly and stood up to grab a water bottle from his fridge, throwing one for Arya to catch as well.

Arya just barely managed to catch it, even though there was barely a five feet gap between where she was sitting on her side of the counter, and where Gendry was standing by the open door of the refrigerator. She muttered a quiet thanks to him and twisted off the cap, taking a long sip so she wouldn't have to say anything else. She tried to keep the water bottle by her mouth long enough for Gendry to add something else, but she eventually had to take it away to breathe, so she settled for simply waiting for him to speak.

"But...yeah," he said eventually. "I guess I thought you were pretty cute."

Arya smiled hesitantly. "Don't let Jon or Robb hear you saying that," she advised, her voice coming out carefully like she was afraid to say the wrong thing and shatter whatever moment was currently passing between them. "Not unless you want a repeat of Jon's punch, plus another one from Robb."

Gendry snorted and waved his hand absently in the air as if he was brushing aside her concerns like it was a mere house fly getting in the way. "Well, I'm already dating you. What, do they expect me to not find you attractive?"

"Well, of course, but there's a difference between thinking I'm attractive  _now_  and thinking that I was attractive at fourteen and fifteen when you were nineteen—wait." Arya stopped short and thumbed the cap slowly. "Did you just say you were dating me?"

Their eyes met from across the counter, a few beats of silence pulsing between the space that separated them. Gendry's eyebrows furrowed together. "I mean, um, yeah." He coughed once. "You know, we're, um...dating. The wedding. The contract...dating," he stammered.

Arya nodded slowly. She was barely even registering the words she was hearing. All she could do was nod like a puppet. "...Yeah," she said softly. "The contract...dating."

Gendry's eyes fell down to her lips, and then they shot back up to her face, that one small movement splintering their moment into a million pieces.

Arya stands up and goes over to the couch, snatching up her bag and flinging it over her shoulder. Stupid, stupid. Whatever she thought she could do by dropping hints for Gendry to pick up on weren't going to work. He made it clear where he stood on his thoughts on dating her, obviously unable to separate the idea of being with her from the stupid contract she had been idiotic enough to write up in the first place. Who writes up a contract for these things anyway? Had she been subconsciously trying to get fucked by her own plans, or was she just that stupid?

She closed her eyes for a brief moment and then took a deep breath before she turned around.

Gendry was standing right behind her, close enough that her bag just brushed his abdomen as she swung around to see him hovering close enough to her that it would be so easy to just reach out and touch him.

Arya looked up at him, suddenly so aware of the height difference between them. Their close proximity only meant that she had to tilt her head back further than usual to actually be able to look at him properly. She swallowed cautiously, opening her mouth and closing it for a few seconds. "I think I'm going to go home," she said on her second try.

Gendry could do nothing but nod, but he didn't make any move to get out of her way so she could leave. So the two of them just stood there, her neck tilted up and his leaning down towards her, the silence stretching out for far too long.

Finally, Arya couldn't handle it anymore. If she stood there any longer, she would start crying. And she would rather die than allow Gendry to see her cry. He might not be aware that they were locked in some kind of battle of whose willpower was stronger, but she knew they were fighting for control, and she refused to lose. "I'm just going to...go," she said.

Gendry nodded.

He still wasn't moving.

"Gendry, I have to..." She gestured with her hand for him to move aside so he wasn't trapping her against the couch anymore.

He started and shook his head quickly as if he was trying to clear his mind. "Right. Sorry," he said, stepping aside so he was pressed against the wall.

Arya walked to the door, feeling him follow her closely behind. She unlocked the door and twisted the doorknob, making it right outside the apartment before turning back around. "I'll see you around," she said.

"Yeah," Gendry said quietly. "See you."

( ONE DAY BEFORE JON FINDS OUT )

"Sansa, are you... _positive_  this is the dress you want me to wear for your wedding?" Arya asked for the hundredth time as she shifted in front of the mirror, trying to get a good look at the back of the dress.

Sansa sat on the sofa behind her, one leg crossed gracefully over the other. She was sipping at an iced latte, somehow looking impeccable despite the long day they had ahead of them. Her long red hair had been straightened and pulled up into a high ponytail tied tightly at the top of her head and thrown over her left shoulder, her wavy hair cascading down the front of her body, and she was wearing a white turtleneck sweater dress and a pair of black suede boots.

She didn't have her final dress fitting until two days from now, which meant she was able to sit back comfortably, drink her iced coffee, and simply command certain orders and tweaks to the dresses as she watched Arya fidget in the mirror.

The dress Sansa had picked out for her to wear was a dusty rose colored woven gown with double spaghetti straps, an embroidered brocade bodice, and a chiffon skirt, the deep V of the neckline plunging just a bit further than Arya was used to but not entirely uncomfortable with.

It wasn't that she didn't like the dress. In fact, it was gorgeous. She was surprised with how much she loved it.

And yet...

"What's wrong with the dress?" Sansa asked as she bit the straw for her coffee.

"It's just so...it's so beautiful."

Sansa snorted. "Yeah. That's kind of the point," she pointed out. "There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to be one of those brides who purposefully choose the ugliest dresses for their bridesmaids and maid of honor to wear so I could make sure I was the most beautiful person in the room."

"How considerate of you," Arya said absentmindedly as she gathered the chiffon skirt in her hand and twisted her head over her shoulder to try and get a good look at the open back of the dress.

Sansa shook her head. "Nope. It's just that I also refuse to be the kind of bride who's so horribly insecure that she feels like she has to make everyone else look ugly so she can be the beautiful one."

Arya smiled to herself and sighed, dropping the skirts from her hand to the floor and turning around on the podium to face Sansa fully. "Okay. Be honest. What do you think?"

Sansa leaned her head to the side as she inspected the dress carefully, the hand that wasn't holding her coffee stretched out on the back of the sofa. "I think it's perfect."

Arya blushed and looked down at the pale fabric. "Really?"

Sansa nodded. "Ohhh, yeah," she said, standing up and setting down her latte on the coffee table. She approached Arya on the podium and turned her back around to face the mirror, putting her hands on her shoulders. "You look beautiful. This dress is...finally,  _finally_  perfect. And in just a few days, you'll be wearing it in front of everyone so don't do anything to get it dirty," she ordered sternly, tugging on the double spaghetti straps in warning. "Gendry's going to shit himself when he sees you."

Arya let out a laugh in surprise. " _Sansa_!"

Sansa met her shocked gaze in the mirror, her face the picture of perfect innocence. "What?" she asked, the paragon of politeness. "I didn't say anything."

Arya shook her head in mocking admonishment. "For shame, Sansa," she chided teasingly. "Does Willas know you have such a potty mouth, and a dirty mind to match it?" she asked.

Her sister rested her chin on her shoulder and winked. "He does me one better. He supports it one hundred percent."

"Okay!" Arya said an octave higher than usual, shoving Sansa away from her as Sansa laughed loudly. "That's enough out of you."

Sansa allowed herself to laugh for a few seconds more before she settled down, shifting her weight to one leg as she folded her arms across her chest. "But really," she said, her voice taking on a more serious note as she observed Arya making her way down from the podium. "How are you and Gendry? Since...you know, since you told me you thought things weren't working out the way you thought they would?"

Arya disappeared behind the curtain of the dressing room and raised her arms as the worker who had been helping them all day began assisting Arya in carefully removing the dress around all the pins so she didn't accidentally stab herself. She waited until the dress was off all the way before answering through the curtain. "Um...I'm not sure how to explain it," she replied honestly.

She quickly dressed again in the outfit she'd arrived in: A red off the shoulder top with long bell sleeves and a pair of fitted black pants with zips on the ankles. The outfit was courtesy of Sansa, who had stopped by the house the other day to drop off some clothes as a gift to Arya.

"You need these more than I do," she told Arya as she dropped the box of clothes on the floor of her closet. Sansa had also gone back to her closet in her old room and sorted through the stuff that no longer fit her or the clothes that she didn't like anymore and passed them down to Arya as well. They'd spent the rest of the day in Arya's closet, Sansa reorganizing the entire space while Arya watched in awe as the closet was transformed before her very eyes.

"Well, try to explain it," Sansa told her as Arya reappeared from behind the curtain.

Arya took her bag and put it over her shoulder, swiftly sweeping her hair into a messy ponytail to get it out of her face. "I'm still not sure what we're going to do," she admitted. "But I think I know the direction we're heading."

"Is this...a good direction, or a bad direction?" Sansa asked.

"I don't think I'm ready to tell you yet," Arya said simply. "I think I'll wait until I've made up my mind for sure."

Sansa nodded once firmly. "Fair enough," she agreed as they walked out of the store, linking their elbows together. "Now, what do you say we get some lunch? I'm starving, and there's a sushi restaurant just three blocks away."

Arya grinned and nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

( O O O )

Later that day, when the sky had already turned dark and Arya had shut herself away in the privacy of her own room, she thought about what she'd told Sansa earlier by the dress shop. It was true that she wasn't sure what she wanted to do yet, but was it true that she wasn't sure what direction they were going in yet? It seemed that with every day that passed, Arya just found yet another reason to call the whole thing off. She glanced at her phone and, after a heartbeat of hesitation, she grabbed it and went to text Gendry.

_Arya: Can I come over tomorrow?_

The reply came almost immediately

_Gendry: I think that's the first time you've ever asked me to invite you over._

_Arya: I'm being serious, Gendry. Can I come over tomorrow?_

_Gendry: Yeah, sure. What's up?_

_Arya: I just think we need to talk._

_Gendry: About?_

_Arya: This._

_Gendry: This?_

_Arya: The agreement._

_Gendry: Are you breaking it off?_

_Arya: Not sure yet. That's what I think we need to talk about tomorrow._

_Gendry: Got it. See you tomorrow._

That was it. Just  _see you tomorrow_? He clearly had some kind of idea about what this was all about since he guessed it right away, and she'd basically confirmed what he was thinking.

And all he could say was  _see you tomorrow_.

All that did was solidify her decision. She had no other choice—Arya couldn't keep doing this to herself. She couldn't keep fooling herself with romantic notions that Gendry felt the same way about her and that he would sweep her off her feet so that they could ride off into the sunset after the wedding, all without her ever even speaking about how she felt with him.

And despite how much she wanted to tell him, despite how badly she wanted to crack open and spill her truth all over his personal space, she simply couldn't. She wasn't strong enough for that yet.

All her life, with every relationship she'd ever been in, she'd always been in control. And that was exactly how Arya liked to have it. She liked knowing that she had control over when Jackson Goldbloom left their shared algebra class, depending on whether she took her time packing up her things or if she rushed out of the class like a bat out of hell, just because he liked being near her at all times. She liked knowing that Michael Fitzgerald would never dare touch her without her nod of approval, even when she was sitting in the backseat of his car with her shirt flung over the headrest of the passenger seat because he knew she would have no issue leaving him shirtless in his car with his button uncomfortably undone. She liked seeing how Daniel Spector had agonized over whether or not to take the job playing Prince Désiré in Sleeping Beauty because it would mean having to leave her, despite the amazing opportunity it presented for his career as a dancer. And with Edric, even though their relationship had been anything but exciting or even fun, she still held the reigns when it came to how far they went, what they did, and how often it happened.

But with Gendry...with Gendry, she'd lost all that control. And it terrified her to no end.

And that was why she had to put a stop to it, now.

Before she lost  _all_  control.

( THE DAY THAT JON FINDS OUT )

The weather is eerily nice for a day in February in New York.

Arya had her jacket on over her sweater, but by the time she made it outside, she had to squint to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was nearing the end of the month, so most of the snow was gone already, and even though it was still cool outside, she was able to shrug out of her jacket and sit comfortably in her car while it started up.

On the way to Gendry's apartment, Arya couldn't help the feeling that she was making a huge mistake. What if she told him she wanted to end their agreement and he refused? Despite the fact that they said they wouldn't hold it against the other if they decided to back out, she still felt paranoid—she couldn't help it.

Or...Arya's mind went to an even worse place as her hands tightened around the wheel. Or what if he actually did have  _real_  feelings for her and he thought she didn't because she told him she was calling their deal quits. The thought turned her stomach unpleasantly.

She really should have eaten breakfast before running out of the house, but she couldn't bring herself to force even a bite of toast down her throat.

There was no shortage of possibilities when it came to imagining Gendry's reaction when she told him what she'd decided. She knew, now, that if she told everyone they broke up, no one would hold it against her for not having a date.

Sansa might ask her cautiously if Arya wanted her to ask a friend of hers to be her date for the night, but Arya already knew she would politely refuse and say no.

Even though this was a fake relationship, she would need to take a bit of time to herself to heal.

( O O O )

"Your texts seemed a bit short last night," Gendry said as a greeting, holding the door open for her while he stepped aside to let Arya into his apartment.

Arya smiled tightly at him and shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Sorry. I just...really need to talk to you, I guess."

"Yeah," he said, shutting the door, "you said that last night. About...us. This. Whatever it is. What's up?"

Arya looked around the apartment, so familiar to her, and bit her lip. "Um. Do you mind if I just...use the bathroom first?" she asked.

Gendry shrugged and nodded. "Sure, no problem. I'm sure you know where it is." He pointed it out anyway, but Arya as already making her way down the short hallway.

She knew this apartment like the back of her hand. The first bedroom in the hallway was Gendry's, and then right next to it was a small coat closet that he used to hang all of his jackets (he really did have a hoarding problem), and on the other side of the hallway was the second bedroom, or what Gendry had turned into a small home office for his work space, and then next to it was the apartment's only bathroom.

Arya shut the door behind her and locked it, turning to face the mirror. She looked at her reflection, pale from both the lack of sun in this cold winter weather and from her nerves. She wished she hadn't left her jacket in the car. She wasn't cold—Gendry always had the heat on in his car. She just wanted something to wrap closely around her body for protection. Arya wasn't exactly sure what she wanted—or needed—protection from, but she couldn't help feeling like she needed to shield herself from something. It was stupid paranoia.

Breathing in deep, Arya flushed the toilet so Gendry could hear it and turned on the tap, splashing some water on her face while it was still on.

Gendry was standing in his room when she got out of the bathroom.

She joined him in there, moving to sit on his bed while he stared at a shelf floating on his wall, lined with CDs, his back to her.

"You're here to call it off, right?" he asked.

Arya was caught off guard. In retrospect, she really shouldn't have been as surprised as she was. Even reading her texts from last night, she could see how tense she must have sounded to Gendry, not responding to him with her usual sarcasm at all.

But what really got her was his voice. He didn't sound upset, just...blank. Like there was no emotion in his voice at all.

"Um...yeah, I think so," she replied after a few beats of silence. "I, um...I think it's probably for the best if we don't do...this anymore." She waved her hand between them even though his back was still facing her.

Gendry finally turned to look at her, and his face was just as emotionless as his voice had sounded. He came to sit next to her on the bed, putting one knee up and planting his other foot firmly on the ground. Arya quickly shifted her body so they were facing each other. "Do you mind if I ask why?" he asked. "I mean, if you got another date or something, that's great—"

"No," Arya interrupted quickly. "No, it's nothing like that."

"Then why did you decide to end it now?"

Arya thought about it for a moment, biting her lip. "I...don't know. I think agreeing to fake it all was a mistake from the beginning."

Gendry raised his eyebrows, and he looked like he was about to make a comment.

"I just mean," Arya continued quickly before he could interrupt her thought process, "that it's wrong to lie to everyone about what we're doing. It's not fair to them, you know. I mean, Sansa is practically planning another wedding already."

She shouldn't have said that, really. She saw the way Gendry glanced down quickly, the tips of his ears turning pink.

Arya wanted to slap herself.

"I mean. You know. Obviously, that wouldn't be happening. We shouldn't have...we shouldn't have done this, you know, because we're so close. And you're so much a part of my family. We should have taken into consideration how everyone else would take it. I had no idea they would...react the way they did. So, um, I have the contract in my bag. I know it literally means nothing, but it's still something, and—"

"Arya?"

Arya startled at the sound of her name coming from behind her.

She knew that voice. That voice used to calm her down when she fell off her bike a hundred times while she was trying to learn how to ride. That voice told her to shut up when she purposefully spoke loudly while they were watching a movie together.

Gendry's eyes had gone wide, and she quickly scrambled off of Gendry's bed. He followed her, his hand immediately wrapping around her wrist as she turned around.

And came face to face with Jon.

( THE DAY AFTER JON FOUND OUT )

"What happened yesterday?"

Arya looks up to find Robb standing in her doorway, his eyebrows raised expectantly. He doesn't look angry, so she assumes Jon kept his promise and didn't say anything about her and Gendry's secret, but he still looks suspicious. She moves to sit up on her bed, setting her phone aside and flipping it so it was face down on her blankets.

"With what?" she asked, trying to see how long she could last by playing the innocent act.

Robb gave her a look that told her he knew exactly what she was trying to do. "Yeah, don't try that with me," he said, walking into her room. "I had drinks with Jon last night.

"Oh?" Her voice lifted a bit higher on the word, but hopefully, he didn't pick up on that.

"Yeah. He called me yesterday morning telling me he needed to get something off his chest and I had to meet him at the bar that night."

Arya felt her heart start to race. If Jon said he needed to get something off his chest...maybe he  _had_  splintered under the pressure of his anger and told Robb everything he had found out yesterday. Maybe Robb was just trying to see how long Arya would keep up her straight face before he told her that he, too, was aware of what she'd done.

"And what is it that Jon needed to get off his chest?" she asked casually.

"Beats me," Robb said, throwing his hands up in the air. "He wouldn't tell me shit. I met him at the bar, and then he just ordered a beer and glared at the bartender all night."

Arya furrowed her brow in genuine confusion. "Why was he glaring at the bartender?" she asked.

"I have no idea! I asked if he tried to flirt with Ygritte one night that they went down there and he wanted me to help him, you know, threaten the guy a little bit, tell him that Ygritte was a woman engaged and her husband to be had a whole family of strong men just waiting to beat up some guy who didn't know his place. But he told me that wasn't it. Then, all he said was your name—"

Arya's heartbeat stopped its rapid pounding. It stopped altogether.

"—and then that was it! For the rest of the night. All he said was 'No. Arya.' And then he just ordered another beer and stayed silent for the next three hours.  _Three hours_ , Arya. Do you know how much brooding Jon can accomplish in three hours? He's like, the king of brooding. I have no idea how he does it all. So you need to tell me what happened yesterday between the two of you."

Arya wanted to cry. She wanted to really, truly cry. Even pissed off at her, Jon would never turn his back on her or break a promise he'd made to her. There was a reason they had always been the closest of all Stark siblings, and even when he probably didn't trust her right now, she could still count on him to keep her secrets when she needed him to. Despite feeling angry enough to tell someone.

She shook her head. "It's, um. It's personal."

Robb snorted. "Please. If it was personal, you and Jon would be fine by now. I know you guys. I lived in the same house as you guys for years. You two don't fight. And when you do, it's more often than not about someone or something else. So what happened yesterday? Because I'm not spending the next month with Brooding Jon. Brooding Jon is not fun, especially when he's Drunkenly Brooding Jon."

Arya bit her lip, her teeth digging sharply into her skin. "It's nothing, really. It's just something with Gendry."

" _Gendry_?" Robb repeated, and Arya nodded hesitantly. "Shit, Arya, do I have to go kick his ass now? Because Gendry's my friend. What did he do?"

"Nothing, I swear. It's just, Jon walked in on us when we were in the middle of a...discussion. He used Gendry's spare key and we were in his room so we didn't hear him coming in, and we were in the middle of, y'know, talking when Jon walked in and he was really...upset by what he'd overheard. So then he just—what?" Arya asked.

Robb was looking more furious by the second, his face turning red.

"What did I say?"

"A  _discussion_? He  _overheard_  something?" he repeated. "Arya, I swear to God, if he walked in on you having sex with Gendry, then I  _will_  have to go kick his ass, because I—"

"Oh, my God, we weren't having sex! Why do you and Jon always assume we're having sex?"

"Wait, I'm sorry, what? Since when did Jon assume you two were having sex?"

She really needed to stop talking. All Arya was doing at this point was digging herself into a deeper hole every second.

"Okay," Arya said. She moved up to sit on her haunches, taking Robb's hand to pull him towards her. He sat on the edge of her bed, looking apprehensive and very likely to go murder Gendry right now. "Look. I was not having sex with Gendry yesterday. I wasn't having sex with him because we haven't had sex at all. Jon walked in on us while we were having a bit of a fight. And I'm not sure where we stand right now, but I'm going to go talk it out with Jon first. And then I'm going to go talk it out with Gendry."

Robb still looked ready to punch Gendry, but his shoulders relaxed just slightly. Arya breathed a sigh of relief and closed her eyes.

"No," he said eventually. Arya opened her eyes and cocked an eyebrow. "You shouldn't talk to Jon right now. If this happened yesterday, chances are he's still stewing. If you talk to him now, you'll only get grunts in response."

"You're right," she relented. "So what should I do?"

Robb laughed. "Are you asking me for relationship advice, little sister?"

"Are you going to be an asshole about this, big brother?"

"No. You should go talk to Gendry. As soon as possible, honestly. Chances are, he's sitting in his apartment trying to figure out what to do now."

"What, he doesn't know? I thought Gendry had it all figured out when it came to girls."

Robb mussed up her hair affectionately. "I don't know if you've noticed this as of yet, Arya, but you're not most girls. And you're especially not like the girls Gendry's dated in the past."

( O O O )

Arya doesn't bother texting Gendry before arriving at his doorstep. But she does stand outside his door for a good five minutes, her forehead pressed to his door as she debated whether or not it was worth it to knock.

She didn't want to mess this up. But it had somehow gotten so complicated over the past couple of weeks. She wasn't sure if she could handle it anymore. Then again, when had she ever been the type of person to back down from a challenge.

Arya closed her eyes and squeezed them shut as tight as possible, knocking on Gendry's door three times. They were three hard, solid knocks. Even if he were in one of the rooms, he was sure to hear it.

Gendry answered the door after only two minutes, and he was tugging at the hem of the white undershirt he was wearing. Arya knew him well enough that she knew that meant he had either been laying in his bed or spread out on the couch, wearing nothing but his sweats when she'd knocked and he'd rushed to pull a shirt over his head while simultaneously making his way to the front door.

"Oh." He sounded surprised to see her. She couldn't blame him for that. She  _had_ , after all, rushed out of the apartment as quickly as she could yesterday. The second Jon had slammed the door shut behind him, Arya had pulled free of Gendry's grasp and stumbled over her words and her feet, trying to get out as fast as possible. She still wasn't sure if it was to run away from the conversation they had been in the middle of before Jon interrupted them, or to go after Jon. Either way, she was here now. She hoped that still counted for something.

Gendry slowly stepped aside, opening the door a little wider for her to walk through. "Come on in." She walked into the apartment, and her eyes immediately fell on the containers lining the kitchen counter. Right as she saw them, Gendry said, "It's perfect timing that you came, to be honest. The Chinese food guy just left like, ten minutes ago. So you're more than welcome to have some."

Why were her eyes stinging? It was stupid that she should feel tears threatening to fall right now.

"Thanks," she said softly. "I, uh, haven't eaten today, so I'm pretty starving." And she was; she could feel her stomach rumble to life at the smell of Chinese food.

They quietly assemble themselves in their usual positions by the kitchen counter. Arya hops up onto her stool and kicks her legs freely, her hands finding the sesame chicken with no trouble. Gendry sits across from her and takes the container of egg rolls, passing her a paper plate and setting two of the egg rolls down in front of her.

It's quiet for a few more minutes as they load their plates with food. Arya gets to work cutting her egg rolls in half, scooping out the insides and throwing the shell in the now-empty container, drizzling duck sauce over her small pile of shredded cabbage, garlic, onion, carrots, and ginger. She heard Gendry snort quietly but he didn't say anything; he knew by now that Arya couldn't stand biting into the deep fried shell of the egg roll.

"So, I talked to Jon today," Gendry said after a couple of minutes of silence. He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were fixed resolutely on his full plate, his piles of lo mein, rice, chicken, and egg rolls mixing together so his plate looked like a hot mess. But Arya knew him as well, and she knew that was how he preferred to eat his food, all jumbled together.

How well they both knew each other, and yet, when it came to actual feelings, neither of them knew the first move to make.

"Oh? What happened?"

"He came over this morning. We had a nice chat."

Arya eyed him suspiciously, her fork scooping a small mound of white rice mixed with chicken. "Are you being sarcastic?" she asked.

"Only slightly. I could tell it was him, just by the way he started banging on my door out of nowhere, and it did take a bit of convincing to get him to refrain from punching me."

"...But?"

"But we eventually sat down and talked."

Was he being stubborn on purpose?

"And then what?" Arya asked in frustration.

Gendry's lips twitched slightly, still keeping his eyes on his food, but she noticed the small smirk. She wished the space under the island was empty so she could kick him in the shin. "He told me we should continue this." He used his fork to gesture between them before grabbing two cups and bringing out a liter of soda from his fridge, passing her one of them.

Arya was taken aback. She barely realized that she was taking the drink from Gendry. "What?"

"Yeah. He said we've done it this long enough already. I kind of...agree with him. Unless you still want to end this."

Arya didn't know what to do. Did she want to end this? Or did she want to continue? Continue taking chances with Gendry, seeing where this could go? He  _had_  told her about his conversation with Jon. He could have easily told her that he refused Jon outright and told her to rip up their contract as a sign of finality, but...

But.

She shoved her fork into her mouth, using it as an excuse to buy herself time as she tried to figure out what to do. But in all honesty, she didn't need time to ponder her decision.

By the time she swallowed, she knew her answer.

"So," Arya said, stabbing another piece of sesame chicken, "same rules still apply?"

Gendry grinned at her, raising his cup to hers. "Same rules still apply," he agreed, "sweetheart."

Arya matched his grin as she tapped her cup against his.


	5. Bad Pick Up Lines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the shit show.

Arya woke up feeling like a different person. Her eyes felt puffy from only four hours of sleep, and she was slower than usual getting to the bathroom to brush her teeth, but she felt like she had changed overnight. Nothing drastic, but as she splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth, she couldn't help but feel like there was something different about her.

Maybe it was that she'd gone to sleep vowing not to let whatever feelings she had for Gendry get in her way anymore.

Maybe it had nothing to do with that. But whatever it was, she felt lighter today, like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She still had to keep up her little charade with Gendry, but she'd made herself a promise, and she intended to stick to it until it was all over.

Now all she had to do was get through this wedding without breaking that promise.

( O O O )

The rehearsal dinner was set for tonight, and Arya had spent the entire day looking for a dress. She'd dragged Gendry along to keep her company, which, in hindsight, might not have been the best idea. But Sansa hadn't been able to come, unsurprisingly. She had to work on setting up the dining hall at the hotel for tonight, so Arya had no other choice but to bring Gendry with her.

"You know you could have just bought a dress earlier instead of waiting until the last minute," Sansa pointed out last night when Arya had called her.

"Yeah, that's probably true" Arya admitted, "but then what I have used as my foolproof excuse when you would ask me to come to help you set up the dining hall tomorrow all day?"

She yelled out a quick goodbye and hung out just as Sansa had gotten herself started on a rant about Arya's inconsiderate tendencies and her selfish personality, and immediately texted Gendry right after.

_Arya: We're going dress shopping tomorrow at N_ _ordstrom_

_Gendry: No thanks. I already found the perfect dress to compliment my legs_

_Gendry: It's lace. Picked it up at Saks last week_

_Arya: You're hilarious. I'll pick you up at noon tomorrow_

Ever since that day at Gendry's apartment, when they had clinked their plastic cups together and agreed to continue on with their little plan, they had been surprisingly...good with each other. There wasn't any awkwardness. There wasn't any tension.

Things were, weirdly enough, more normal now than they were when they first started this whole thing.

Things were normal enough, in fact, that Arya had no problem telling Gendry to come with her for her little shopping trip. If she had done that a week ago, she probably would have lost her nerve before hitting send.

It felt nice. Like things were almost back to normal.

Almost...But not quite. Not yet.

She stepped out from behind the curtain of the dressing room, her eyebrows raised in anticipation of Gendry's opinion. The dress she wore was a deep purple, with a halter neck and a hemline that showed off a bit more leg than Arya was used to, but she'd seen it on the hanger and thought it was rather pretty.

Gendry, however, didn't seem to have the same opinion. He was wearing the same facial expression that he'd worn when he'd seen the previous four dresses she'd tried on that were now splayed across the bench outside the dressing room: There was the floral printed dress with the high neckline and flared out skirt (Gendry commented that she looked like a regular 1950s housewife in it, and Arya had promptly taken it off right away), then the floor length fitted gray dress that earned a grimace for no conceivable reason, then the green lace dress with spaghetti straps that Gendry said made her look like a pine tree, and the black cocktail dress with white flowers lining the hem that rested just above her knee.

"I don't like it," he said simply, resting his back against the wall behind him and crossing one ankle over his knee. He let out a heavy sigh, tilting his head to see the three remaining dresses behind Arya.

Arya groaned and threw her hands up. "You don't like any of them! Do you even have an opinion, or is this just your way of punishing me for asking you to come today?"

Gendry raised an eyebrow. "You think I would have actually come if I didn't want to help?" he asked seriously. "I'm giving you my honest opinion. I think it's an ugly dress."

"And you know so much about dresses how?" Arya asked.

"I've taken quite a lot of them off," he quipped back cheekily.

Arya snorted and turned around so he could unzip the dress. "Yeah, I'm sure you did when you had your short-lived career as a drag queen," she said tiredly.

"Hey," he said defensively, "people loved Gendry the Drag Queen."

"God, you can't even make up a good drag name on the spot," she admonished, walking back into the dressing room and shutting the curtain.

"Okay," she called out, shimmying out of the dress and holding it out to Gendry through a small gap. He took it from her, along with the hanger, and she soon heard the sound of it falling on top of the rest of the dresses in her ever-growing pile of rejects. "I'm trying on one last dress, and if you still don't like it, I don't care."

"Fine. Wear a hideous dress for the rehearsal dinner. See if I care."

Arya wished there was no curtain separating them so she could glare at him.

There were three dresses hanging in front of her, a knee-length pink dress, a blue dress with an uneven hem, and a fitted gray one with long sleeves, a short hem, and small pearls sewn into the fabric. She bit her lip as she considered them each, and finally grabbed the blue one, slipping into it and closing the side zipper.

"Okay," she said again. "Gendry, if you don't like this dress, I swear to God I will make you walk all the way home because I don't have the energy in me to try on these other two dresses."

"Let's see it, then," he replied.

Almost shyly, Arya stepped out from behind the curtain, curling her toes in the flip-flops she'd brought along for comfort.

The dress was a dark blue-green color, almost like teal, with one shoulder. Gauze flowed over the dress like water, shifting with each movement she made no matter how small.

Gendry opened his mouth when he saw her, but then he closed it, leaning his head to the side as he inspected the dress more closely. "I...what dress is Sansa wearing tonight?" he asked.

Caught off guard, Arya scrambled to get her phone from her bag and showed Gendry a picture of the dress.

"You should get this dress," he said.

"Why did you need to see Sansa's dress to finally come to that decision?"

"I needed to make sure you didn't choose a dress that would make you look more beautiful than her. She'd kill you. And  _your_  dress would beat  _her_ dress if she wasn't the bride and the star of the show."

Arya was struck into silence, a shiver going down her spine as she took the compliment in, unsure of what it meant. But whatever it meant, it sent a little thrill through her.

"Thanks," she said softly, slowly retreating back behind the curtain to get undressed.

Gendry says something back to her but Arya doesn't hear as she tugs her sweater over her head and zips up her skinny jeans. She fishes her sneakers back out of her bag and shoves her flip flops down to the bottom, putting on a clean pair of socks and lacing up the sneakers as quickly as possible.

By the time she comes out of the dressing room, the dresses that had been splayed across the bench are gone and Gendry is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation as he waits for her so they can finally leave.

Arya grabs her blue dress by the hanger and thanks whatever god is in heaven that the lines at the register are short today. It doesn't even take them ten minutes to get to the front, and Arya swiftly swipes her card and signs her name on the receipt, thanking the woman behind the counter and rushing out of the store. When she makes it out and the cool breeze of February wind hits her face, Arya smiles in relief.

"I'd say I had a pretty successful day, don't you think?" Arya asked as she saw Gendry join her out of the corner of her eye. "Look, we got here at half-past twelve, and now it's only two. I bet you've never gone shopping with someone as efficient as me."

Gendry sent a look her way but he's just barely smiling.

"If the dinner only starts at eight, we still have time to get lunch," he said, looking ahead at the cars passing by them on the street.

Arya turns to him with a broad smile on her face. "How does pizza sound?"

Gendry snorted. "We should probably start eating healthier things," he commented.

Arya shook her head and started walking towards the end of the block to the crosswalk. "Nah. I spent years on a strict diet for dance. I can live the rest of my life eating pizza every day if I want to, and I'll be damned if I'm not dragging you down with me."

( O O O )

The Stark family had always been involved in the business of hotels. Ned Stark had only been a young man of twenty-three when he took over the reigns of the Stark Hotel, and despite the other chains of hotels founded by their family name that dotted the country, the Stark Hotel was the original, the oldest, and the pride and joy of their family.

Even though there was a certain pride in every Stark member for this hotel, Sansa had decided against marrying in their ballroom and chose the ever-classic dream of marrying in the Plaza. However, Ned had managed to convince her to have her rehearsal dinner at the Stark hotel, and after much convincing, she'd finally relented.

As Arya sat in the dressing room waiting for Sansa to finish getting ready, she cast a look around the space they were occupying, her thoughts traveling to her own wedding. Whether or not she'd have one, who it would be with, where she would have it...if Arya were to ever marry, she knew she'd probably end up getting married here. She'd always felt a very strong connection to the hotel, more familiar with it than the rest of her siblings. There were nights when Ned would have to spend the night here for work and she would somehow convince him to let her stay with him just because she loved it that much.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice Sansa calling her name. Arya glanced up and saw Sansa holding out a hand to her. "Do you mind helping me zip up my dress?" she asked, turning around and lifting her hair away.

Arya stood up from the little round tufted ottoman bench she'd chosen as her seat and zipped up Sansa's dress. It was a long wine-colored dress with the straps crisscrossing at the back and showing off a diamond-shaped bit of her back.

Arya, who had been dressed for the better part of an hour now, moved Sansa's hair back behind her shoulders. It had been curled very loosely and done up in a braided crown half-up half-down hairstyle. The rest of her red hair flowed down her back elegantly. Her face was flushed with anticipation and excitement, her cheeks blushing red underneath the makeup she'd applied for herself.

"Don't forget to breathe," Arya reminded her. "You still have a wedding to get through."

Sansa closed her eyes, her eyeshadow catching the light. "Three days," she whispered, mostly to herself.

Arya smiled. "Just think," she said, fitting her elbow in through Sansa's as they walked out the door and began the trek down the short hallway to the elevator, "in three days, you'll no longer be a Stark."

Sansa snorted. "Yeah, right. I'll always be a Stark. It just won't be the name I use every day."

"What is it you decided on? Sansa Stark-Tyrell?"

She nodded and pressed the button for the elevator. "I'm changing it as soon as we get back from our honeymoon."

The two sisters entered the elevator and pressed the button for the third level.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?" Arya asked.

"The house, in my old bedroom. I'm sleeping there until the wedding. Willas decided tonight would be the last night we see each other until I walk down the aisle."

"How romantic," Arya said. She wasn't sure if she was saying dryly, or if she was being serious.

Sansa looked at Arya through the mirror that covered one of the walls of the elevator. "Don't so upset at the prospect of spending the next three nights with me," she said. "You're more than welcome to go spend the night at your boyfriend's apartment, you know."

Arya laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll make sure you to walk down the aisle before you as a ghost from beyond the grave after Mom and Dad kill me for sleeping at Gendry's."

"Please. As if they still think you're a virgin—"

"Sansa!"

"What, did you honestly think they believed you were a twenty-three-year-old virgin?" Sansa gave her a look. "I have news for you. They knew when we were sneaking around."

Arya fidgeted uncomfortably. "I mean, I didn't think they believed all the stories I told them, but still."

"One time, when Robb was sixteen, he tried to sneak into the house at three in the morning, and Dad turned on the light. He got so scared that he dropped the wrapper for his condom out of his hands."

" _What_?"

"Yep. The only reason I know is because I was the one who accidentally woke Dad up." At Arya's questioning look, Sansa continued her explanation. "I had just managed to get back into the house and change into my pajamas when I went to use the bathroom and tripped. He woke up from hearing me fall, believed me when I told him I had just woken up to pee, then went to check on everyone's rooms and saw Robb was missing from his bed. Not even ten minutes later, Robb walked right into the house."

Arya's eyes were wide by the time Sansa finished her story, wondering how she'd never heard this before. "Did Robb ever know that it was basically your fault he got caught?"

"We were at the same party—I just left a little bit earlier than he did while he went to go have sex with his girlfriend at the time."

"Oh, my God."

"Do you remember that time you were dating Daniel, in your freshman year of college?" Sansa asked, watching the numbers tick down on the elevator.

Arya nodded mutely.

"I once overheard Mom telling Aunt Lysa over the phone that she was going to put a few boxes of Plan B in your closet without telling Dad."

"I thought that was you!" Arya shrieked.

It was true—only two weeks after Arya had finally had sex for the first time ever with Daniel, she had been looking through her closet and found a small pile of Plan B boxes in the shoe box where she kept her favorite and most worn pair of boots. She had just thought it had been it was Sansa, simply assuming her mother would have tried to talk to her about it if she suspected she was having sex, but never brought it up.

Sansa shook her head, pursing her lips to keep her laughter in. "Nope. I just didn't tell you. And Mom didn't want you to know that she knew you were having sex, and she especially didn't want to let Dad know."

"How did she even find out?"

Sansa shrugged her shoulders delicately. "She's our mom. She did the same thing to me like, a week after I had sex with Joffrey for the first time."

Their elevator reached the third floor, finally, and Arya was still blinking rapidly by the time they reached the double entrance doors to the ballroom, trying to process the new information she'd just taken in.

"Arya, you look beautiful," Catelyn said as she hugged her daughter. Arya wrapped her arms around her, trying not to think of her telling her sister about her sex life.

( O O O )

"So, you're telling me that your mom just decided to put a bunch of boxes of Plan B in your closet when you were eighteen and never brought it up, never said anything to you, and you never suspected a single thing? In your entire life since it happened?" Gendry asked, his eyes wide as he took in Arya's story with undivided attention.

"That's exactly what I'm telling you!" Arya replied, still feeling a little shock. "I've always thought my mom was so strict and stuff when it came to sex. I just assumed that because she never brought it up to me, she never thought I was doing it. But...nope. She was secretly helping me laid the entire time."

Gendry whistled lowly and shook his head. "Damn. Cheers to Catelyn Stark, then, I guess."

Arya raised her glass of champagne to clink against his, a small giggle escaping her lips. "It's probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard," she admitted.

"It is a bit bizarre, isn't it?" Gendry agreed, taking a long sip from his champagne flute. "Then again, you never know what your parents were like when they were in college, do you? Your mom might have needed a box of Plan B at some point and didn't have one."

Arya wrinkled her nose. "Can we not?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and shaking her head.

"Oh, is the thought of your mother knowing about your sex life making you uncomfortable?"

"Gendry, I will not hesitate to cause a scene and throw my champagne on your nice suit."

He laughed off her clearly empty threat, and Arya settled back into her chair, smiling brightly down at the table. This was...easy. This was  _nice_. It was like they had been off the entire time they'd pretended to date before because they both jumped into it without thinking of the consequences, and the next thing Arya knew, she was falling for her best friend once again when she'd sworn never to let those old feelings get the best of her again.

And after they'd agreed to try it one more time, things had felt so  _normal_  between them again.

Those old feelings seemed to be ebbing away, slowly leaking out of Arya with every word she spoke to him. It was nothing short of pure, strong relief as she realized it. She knew part of it was thanks to her literally trying to force it out of her system, but whatever worked best.

She wasn't the type of person to judge the way things got done as long as they ended up being finished.

And it seemed like her feelings for Gendry were finally going away, slowly but surely.

All she could hope for now was that they stayed away before they tried to almost ruin her entire friendship with Gendry once again.

"Arya?"

Arya blinked twice and lifted her chin from her hand. "Hmm?"

Gendry was waving his hand in front of her face, eyebrows raised. "I was trying to speak to you, but you were just kind of zoning out. What were you thinking about?"

Arya shrugged one of her shoulders, shaking her head. "Just...losing in my own thoughts, I guess. Why? What's up?"

"I was gonna tell you how pretty your sister looked tonight."

"Oh." Arya looked over her shoulder to see Sansa standing in the middle of the room, talking to one of her friends from college. There was a glowing smile on her face, her red hair looking perfect and her face practically shining with happiness as her friend put one hand on her shoulder earnestly, a look of fondness on both girls' expressions. "She really does look beautiful, doesn't she?"

"She's gonna be really happy with Willas, isn't she?"

Arya nodded, a smile spreading across her own face. "Yep. They're going to have a great life together, I think."

"I hope so. She deserves it, probably more than almost anyone I know."

"I just hope her wedding is the one day she gets to look back on and thinks it's the time when she was the happiest, where not even one thing went wrong."

"You don't think she'd think that about other days? The birth of her first child, the day one of them gets married, the day—"

"Those days are different," Arya said, waving her hand in front of him. "The day her child is born, when she  _does_  have a child, you only feel happiness after it's all over and you hold your baby in your arms. The day your child gets married, you, as the parent, will feel sad as well as happy because they're officially starting their own lives without you because they have someone else to lean on when they need it. But Sansa's wedding day is literally all about her, just like it should have been from the very beginning. It should be a day in her life where she wakes up happy and goes to sleep even happier, with her mood dropping not even once."

Gendry was looking at her with something like awe on his face. Arya ducked her head, feeling like she was blushing.

"What are you staring at me for?" she asked.

"You really love her, don't you?"

Arya scoffed. "Of course I do. She's my sister—I love her more than anything. I used to  _hate her_  when we were younger, and it's like, one day, we just woke up and looked at each other and asked ourselves why we couldn't stand the sight of each other for years. Now, I couldn't even live without her."

"That should be in your speech," Gendry said. He sounded frantic, like he was thinking five different thoughts all at once. "That should be something you put in your speech. I know you still haven't finished it yet, so you should write that down somewhere before you forget it."

Arya opened her mouth and then thought for a few seconds. "How did you know I still haven't finished my speech?" she asked. She knew she hadn't told him that her speech was only half-finished yet, too ashamed to admit it.

Gendry gave her a look. "Come on, Arya. You think I wouldn't know?"

Arya gave him a look and furrowed her brow together as she fished her phone out from her small clutch, opening her Notes app and quickly typing out a few sentences before shutting it and putting it back.

She snapped the clutch closed and sat back against her chair. "What on Earth would I ever do without you?" she asked.

Gendry smiled at her and raised his glass to her before downing the rest of the champagne inside. "It's a good thing neither of us will ever know."

The thought sent a flurry of butterflies fluttering through Arya's stomach, and she quickly stomped them down, biting her lip as she avoided his eyes.

Suddenly, Gendry stood up and offered his hand to her. "What do you say we have a dance together, hmm?"

Arya snorted. "I think not. You know I can't dance."

"Come on. After this whole charade is over, who knows the next time we'll have the chance to make fools of ourselves on the dance floor and not give a shit about what anyone else thinks about it?"

Well, Arya thought as she uncrossed her legs and fitted her hand through his as she allowed him to lead her to the dance floor, he always did make one hell of a point.

( O O O )

An hour later, Arya was repeatedly kicking Gendry's ankle in a rhythmic motion, keeping time in her head as her foot dully collided with his ankle. She had her chin cradled in her hand, trying to keep her eyes open as her Aunt Lysa droned on and on about how her sweet little boy was growing up into such a delightful young man right before her very eyes.

The very eyes that were currently filling with tears as her son, now twenty and picking at a piece of lettuce, tried to zone out of whatever his mother was saying. Lysa tried to stroke Robin's hair, but his hand batted hers away halfheartedly, like he knew it would do no good and she would be right back at it in only a few minutes. Arya felt a bit of pity for him, three years younger than her and still being treated like a child by his overbearing and eternally paranoid mother.

"And would you believe it if I told you," Lysa continued as she drew her hand back from Robin's hair, "that he has a friend getting married. Married! Well, the second I heard the news, I said to him, there's no way I'll allow that kind of behavior in  _my_  house. I said to my Robin, there's no way you'll be following in your  _friend's_  footsteps. No, he has quite a long while until he's ready to get married, isn't that right, sweetheart?"

Robin blinked blearily up at them and shrugged his shoulders.

Arya vaguely wondered if he was high right now.

"Well, anyway. Enough about  _me_ ," Lysa said, waving her hand in the air and plastering a slightly dazed smile on her face. "Let's talk about  _you_ , Arya."

Arya cocked her head to the side, not missing how Lysa had spent the past twenty minutes going on and on about her twenty-year-old son and somehow considered all of it just talking about  _her_ , but tried to give her aunt a smile in return. "What's to know? It's not my wedding, is it?"

"Oh, yes, well, I seem to have lost Sansa! I was having a wonderful conversation with her and then she got called away—some kind of bride business, you know how it is."

"Right," Arya said, nodding her head in agreement. She kicked Gendry a bit more forcefully this time as she heard him try to disguise a laugh as a cough. Because right behind Lysa, to Arya's complete and utter  _un_ surprise, Sansa was standing with Margaery laughing with her over champagne flutes. She caught her sister's eye and gave her a sympathetic look, to which Arya responded with a glare.

"I always said your mother let you children get married too young. She always seemed to let you kids run right out of the nest without even saying goodbye." Lysa swept a knowing look between Arya and Gendry and sniffed purposefully before taking a bite of her salad.

Arya's thoughts went once more to Catelyn telling Lysa of Arya's sex life and wondering for the seventh time that night if she had been drunk when she decided to tell her.

"Anyway," Lysa said with a heavily executed sigh, as if it was a chore to turn the conversation away from her own personal thoughts. "Let's talk about you, now, shall we, dear? I see you've got a lovely new...boyfriend, have you? What's your name?" She turned her eyes on Gendry, who immediately straightened in his chair and blinked like an owl at her.

"This is Gendry," Arya said. "We've been friends for more than a few years, actually."

"How  _sweet_ ," Lysa simpered. "Tell me,  _Gendry_ , is all of this wedding business getting to your head now, as well? Are you planning on popping the question to my darling niece anytime soon?"

Gendry opened his mouth to answer, a smirk already pulling his lips upwards, and Arya clamped a hand on his shoulder and jumped in before he could speak. "We haven't discussed it," she said firmly, digging her nails in his arm through the thick material of his suit jacket. "We've only been dating for two months, you see."

" _Oh_ , still such a new relationship. I remember when I first met my dear Jon Arryn." Arya could see her jaw clench tightly as she finished speaking, and wanted to call her aunt out on marrying the man just for the money could offer her, but she knew his death had only caused her paranoia to heighten and now, any mention of him caused her to rage at whoever spoke of him.

"Well, anyway, how did you two get together?" Lysa asked, leaning forward eagerly.

Arya wasn't quick enough to stop Gendry from speaking this time. "Oh, you should have been there the entire time I was working my magic on her," Gendry said, grandly throwing his arm around Arya's shoulders. "I really managed to woo her."

"How?" Lysa asked intently, her eyes glinting.

"You should really hear the pick up lines I used on her. Worked like a goddamn  _charm_ ," Gendry promised.

Arya saw Lysa's eyebrows stitch together, and she tried to kick at Gendry's ankle again, but he put his hand on her knee to stop her. "I mean, really, I've never used such creative stuff on someone. But that's just the effect your niece has on me." His arm tightened around Arya's shoulders and grinned wide at Lysa.

Lysa, who was looking between the two of them with something akin to shock covering her face.

Robin was still staring blankly at his salad with his bloodshot eyes.

"I think my personal favorite line was this one," Gendry continued, showing no signs of stopping his speech. "We were sitting in my apartment eating some Chinese food, and I just turned to her and said, 'You look like an angel that fell from heaven and hit its face on the pavement.' I mean, who wouldn't have fallen for that one?"

Arya leaned her head up to face the ceiling and closed her eyes, Gendry's forearm cushioning the back of her head.

"How...charming," Lysa commented, her nose wrinkling distastefully. She didn't even try to hide it.

"Isn't it?" Gendry said with overeager sincerity. His eyes were alight with mirth.

Arya opened her eyes and felt her lips twitch up in a smile of her own.

She straightened up in her chair and faced Gendry with a wide grin. " _Babe_ , you're forgetting the best one," she said, nudging his elbow with her shoulder. "Don't you remember the first one you ever said to me?"

Gendry looked like he was trying to hold in his laughter and it was taking more effort than he thought. "Can't remember. Do tell, Arya."

"We were sitting in my kitchen and you needed the WiFi password, so you turned to me said, 'Hey, girl. Is your name Wi-Fi? Because we have a connection.'" She turned back to Lysa. "I practically kissed him on the spot."

Gendry let a short, loud laugh slip out of his mouth by accident and shook his head dramatically at Lysa. "Pity she didn't; it took two more weeks of me thinking up genius lines like those before she finally agreed to go on a date with me. She really made me work for it."

Arya shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "Oh, well. We're here now, aren't we?" she asked.

Gendry did laugh this time, real and light. "Yep, here we are."

Lysa looked like she was smelling something bad.

Robin, meanwhile, was still sitting there.

Still high.

Still looking unseeingly at his salad.

Arya wondered how long before the rehearsal dinner he'd decided to smoke weed.

Gendry made a show of looking at his watch and sighed loudly. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to excuse me and my girlfriend, here," he said as he stood up and brought Arya with him. "We have to go dance now. But it was a pleasure to enjoy your company."

Arya was quick to follow him onto the dance floor this time, a bright smile lighting up her face as she kept her hand in his.

( O O O )

When they finally made it to the dance floor, Gendry pulled her close to him and ducked his head down so it was buried in her shoulder, laughing quietly.

Arya felt his body shaking and couldn't help laughing with him. "Those were probably the worst pick up lines I've ever heard in my life."

"Hey, speak for yourself, Arya," Gendry said, leaning back to look at her. "I've used some of those on girls in college."

Arya pretended to gag and let him begin to lead their dance together. "Let's not talk about your taste in girls in college, shall we?" she suggested meaningfully as Gendry spun her around and then brought her back to his chest.

"Why, do you have something against them?" he asked. "I'll have you know I dated some of the finest girls college could offer. We were all so high all the time none of us even noticed what we were saying half the time." Gendry looked back at the table they'd just escaped from. "Kind of like your dear old cousin over there."

Arya didn't bother looking at her family sitting at the table behind her. She had gone to the dance floor so she didn't have to bother herself with them anymore. She focused her attention on Gendry, letting him spin her around once more. "Alright then," she said. "Let's hear some more of your amazing pick up lines if they worked so well in college."

"I thought we just agreed that standards weren't very high in college."

"No, but you definitely were, and we all know that weed plus hot girls equal terrible bad pick up lines that are only accepted because aforementioned hot girls are horny and want sex," Arya said matter-of-factly. "So let's go, Gendry. What was your most popular pick up line you used when you were out looking for girls that night?" she asked.

Gendry looked behind her shoulder as he thought of them, and she knew the moment he realized what it was when his face turned bright red.

"Okay, what is it?" she said loudly.

Gendry dipped her in an exaggerated fashion to ignore the question for as long as he could before Arya straightened up, her hair swinging in her face.

"Okay," he said seriously, moving her hair from her face before standing still in front of her. People continued dancing around them, but they were standing at the edge of the dance floor completely motionless, Gendry putting his hands on her shoulders and bending down so they were the same height. She felt like a small child who was about to be scolded by her father. "Whatever I say next, you have to swear that you'll still think of me as your friend after this."

Arya snorted and shrugged her shoulders, her hands falling to her sides. "Okay, whatever you say. I'm sure I won't judge you  _too_  hard. At least, not actually. Depending on what comes out of your mouth, I might have to over exaggerate my jokes when I make fun of you from now on, so be careful of that when you choose whatever heinous line you're about to give me."

Gendry closed his eyes for a few seconds and then reopened them. He cleared his throat and said, with a completely straight face, "Do your breasts make up Mount Rushmore—because I think my face should be among them."

Arya's mouth dropped open and she let out a small noise of shock, like a cross between a squeak and a shriek. "Please tell me I just heard you incorrectly, because there is no way I will ever believe you used to say that to other humans."

"In my defense, that was the one I would use only when I was really drunk, like, all the time."

"I don't care! That's no excuse!"

She started giggling uncontrollably, and Gendry laughed along with her, rolling his eyes and pulling her back into the sea of dancing couples. He twirled her out, away from him, and then pulled her back in without warning, his hand clasping hers. "There are plenty more that I used back when I was nineteen and trying to beat all my friends by sleeping with the most girls."

Arya got her laughing under control and breathed deeply, her cheeks flushed with giddiness. "Well, don't leave me hanging. You can't just leave it like that! I need to know more of your grand pick up lines. Although, I  _highly_  doubt anything could beat the one you just told me."

"Okay, okay, here's a good one I would use in the library. It's handy that I have my library card because I'm totally checking you out."

She dissolved into another fit of giggles, the sound much more high-pitched than her usual laugh, and Gendry kept on laughing with her. People dancing close to them were giving them strange looks, but surprisingly, none of them were judgmental. It was like because they were doing it a rehearsal dinner for a wedding, they had a free pass to be as giggly as they wanted to be.

"Okay, I don't think I can hear any more. You really are terrible at this," Arya said. "Did any of those even work on anyone?"

Gendry shrugged. "Sometimes yeah, sometimes no. But I don't think they ever actually worked on any girl. They just decided to sleep with me because why not?"

"Yeah, that and they also probably thought you were really attractive."

Gendry smiled proudly. "Did you just offhandedly admit that I'm attractive, Arya?" he asked mockingly.

Arya raised an eyebrow and she was about to answer his question with a snide remark when the photographer came around, asking them if they wanted to take a picture together. Arya almost refused, but Gendry shushed her. "Of course we would," he said.

He moved her so his chest was pressed against her back, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist from behind. And then, after the picture was taken, Gendry tilted her head so he could kiss her softly. Through Arya's closed eyes, she saw a flash pop off.

When they separated, Gendry smoothly took her back in his arms to continue their dance like nothing had happened.

"What was that for?" Arya asked as she let him begin to lead their dance again. Neither of them were rather skilled when it came to dancing with a partner, but at least Gendry didn't just trip over her feet for no reason.

"For calling me attractive," he replied without missing a beat, flashing a smirk down at her.

Arya rolled her eyes. "Am I supposed to try and deny that people find you attractive? You've had enough girlfriends that you wouldn't need the ego boost."

Gendry thought about it for a second, his eyes traveling up past the top of Arya's head before he answered her, giving her a delicate twirl. "Yeah, but getting a compliment out of you is like pulling teeth. You'd rather throw up than give me an actual compliment on something. Can you really blame me for taking that one little comment of yours to heart more than any of my old girlfriends? Especially since you're my best friend?" he asked, looking back down at her and meeting her gaze with open, honest blue eyes.

Arya looked right back at him, unflinching and unapologetic. She didn't back down from his look, but she didn't say anything, either, even as she saw the question burning in his eyes that he wanted her to answer without asking her first. Well, she wouldn't let him do that. If he wanted her to say something, then she needed to hear him ask the question first. Especially if this conversation was going the way she suspected it would. There would be no way she would give up whatever control she'd gained over the past few days right now.

Finally, when he saw that Arya wasn't going to say anything until he elaborated further, Gendry took a deep breath and continued speaking. "Do you want to know something funny?" he asked her.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I think I might have started to get some feelings for you over the past few weeks," he said.

So open, not hesitant at all—his own truth, right out there for everyone to hear if they cared enough to listen. Nobody did care enough, though. Except for Arya.  _Arya_  cared enough to listen. And even as the words hit her ears, even as her brain processed what she'd just heard, her expression didn't change. She couldn't find the right words to respond with. Every possible response she could think of sounded wrong. But Gendry was looking at her expectantly—not waiting for her to reaffirm her feelings for him, just waiting for a response from her after his confession.

Eventually, all she could manage to get out was a small, thin-voiced "Don't joke." Her look of cool composure fractured just a little bit when her eyebrow twitched under the pressure of whatever this conversation had turned into, and Arya broke their staring contest first, looking away from him.

"I'm not joking," Gendry insisted. "I really did. In fact, it might have even been a while before we even started this whole... _thing_. It was like I hadn't realized it yet, and my brain just made me ask you to pretend to date so I could get close to you, or figure out if you liked me, too, or—something along those lines, I guess." He tried to get her to look at him, but Arya refused. "Do you?"

Arya blinked twice, trying to get her thoughts in order. "I—you don't even like me," she breathed.

"What?" Gendry asked, looking at her incredulously. "What are you talking about? Of course, I like you. I—I  _really_  like you, Arya. And when Jon came to see me, he told me that he could see that and it was time to step up and try to let you know how I actually feel. Arya, you don't even know how much I—"

"Stop!" Arya said loudly, too loud for the music playing. People near them turned to them with brows furrowed in confusion. Arya stopped dancing with Gendry and began walking away. She tried not to look like she was so upset, but she could feel her face turning red and her eyes began to sting with tears that hadn't shed yet, so she ducked her head and made sure to look at the floor beneath her.

Gendry followed her off the dance floor, quick to catch up with her with his long legs. She was trying to walk as fast as she could but Arya had never been so great with heels and she didn't want to trip over her own feet while she felt like she was about to cry.

When they made it out of the ballroom, Gendry took her elbow and turned her to face him.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "How could you say I don't like you? I know very well how I feel about you. And you are—"

"Realistic," Arya cut in, interrupting him mid-sentence. "I knew this would happen. I knew it would because the same thing happened to me. You think you like me but it's just the pretending. Kissing when we have to, putting your arm around me, showing everyone how we're such a happy couple—it's all gotten to your head."

"The same thing happened to you?" Gendry repeated. "So you admit that you have feelings for me—"

"No! It wasn't real feelings. We—we just caught up in this whole thing. That's why I ended it the first time after Jon overheard us. Because I didn't want to get hurt when I knew you didn't feel the same way I thought I felt about you."

"But I do. And this—" Gendry gestured between them for emphasis with his free hand "—This is real. It's not us playing ourselves or whatever you think it is."

Arya tried to get her elbow out of his grasp, and he let go of her immediately. Even confused, even angry, he always did what she wanted. Always put her and whatever she wanted above himself and whatever  _he_  wanted.

"Arya, you can't always just run away from everything when you get scared. It's what you've done with every relationship I've seen you get yourself into."

"That is so not true," she said defensively. "I was  _realistic_  when it came to my other relationships. I wasn't going to deal with years of unhappiness or indifference just because someday, down the line, I might get to be happy with them at some point in my life."

"But we could be happy together  _now_. You just said you had feelings for me, and I know you still do. Everyone already thinks we're together—"

"Gendry it's not my fault that you like to jump headfirst into every single situation and expect the best possible outcome because you're too blinded by what you want that you don't even bother thinking of the possible consequences. But I'm not going to let myself be the consequence, not with you."

Gendry recoiled as if she'd slapped him, stunned into silence.

_Even confused, even angry, he always did what she wanted._ Knowing that she had that kind of power made her hate herself. Especially when she decided to use it to her advantage.

"I think you should go, Gendry." She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her face to the elevator. "It's not a good idea for you to stay here."

"You're kicking me out?" Gendry asked, surprised beyond belief.

"It was a dick move for you to bring this up at my sister's rehearsal dinner. You really should have thought that through better. And I'm not spending the rest of the night dodging you and prompting a bunch of questions about what happened between us. So yes, I'm kicking you out. And you need to leave."

She didn't bother looking over her shoulder to see if he left when she turned on her heel and walked right back into the ballroom.

( O O O )

"What happened between you and Gendry tonight?" Sansa asked from Arya's doorway.

Arya looked up from where she was sprawled across her bed, wearing her favorite pajamas with her face freshly washed and her hair tied up into a messy bun.

"What are you talking about?" she asked nonchalantly.

"Don't try to pull one over my head," Sansa said blithely, walking into the room. "I saw you walking out of the ballroom, and when you walked back in, you were alone. And Gendry didn't come back in for the rest of the night. I tried to talk to you about it afterward, but you made sure to be by yourself the entire time."

Arya shrugged, fiddling with her phone and tapping her index and middle fingers against the screen. The rhythmic tapping noise of her nails against the protective glass calmed her, somehow.

Sansa sighed heavily and turned around. Before she made it out of the room, she looked over her shoulder at Arya one last time. "Whatever it is, try to figure it out, soon. Not because of the wedding," she said quickly when she saw Arya ready a snarky comment, "but because you guys are good together. Show up alone for all I care at this point. If you're not with him when he clearly makes you happy, what's the point of having a date?"

Arya and Sansa looked at each other for a few more beats of silence before Sansa shook her head at Arya. "Fine. But you're going to have to talk to him," she said.

Arya shook her head. "Actually, I don't have to do that," she replied. "There's no reason for me to talk to him when I don't want to."

"No, but you have to. Even if you guys don't fix whatever your fight was about earlier tonight, and you break up...he's still your best friend and you should still try to fix  _that_  relationship while you still can. Before it's too late and you lose him as your friend, too."

Arya sunk deeper into her blankets. "I'll talk to him when I feel like I'm ready to talk to him," she said stubbornly.

"Well, get ready," Sansa told her, "because I just let him in the house, and he's waiting outside by the stairs."

"Sansa!"

Manipulative, meddling, control freak Sansa who needed everything to be her way. Arya wanted to hit her. This had nothing to do with her! Why did she think it was her right to go and let Gendry in when Arya had made it very clear that she didn't want to speak to him at all?

She was halfway finished with untangling herself from the blankets she'd piled onto her mattress when Gendry appeared in her doorway.

"It's because she loves you," he said, as if he could read her mind and know the exact question she was wondering. Arya looked past his shoulder at the back of Sansa's head disappearing down the hallway. Her red hair moved with each step she took, still curled, although they'd fallen throughout the night.

"What?" Arya asked stupidly.

"I could see the question written all over your face," Gendry answered, moving farther into her room and closing the door behind him. "She let me in because she wants to see you happy."

"Then she should know me well enough by now to know that talking to you right now isn't the right thing to do," she bit back. "I need time."

"Time?" Gendry repeated. "What's 'time' to you, Arya? You're going to ask me to keep my distance from you until you're ready to be my friend again, but  _just_  my friend even though we both know we both have feelings for each other that go a lot farther than just  _friends_ , and then you're going to keep asking me not to cross any boundaries until we just don't talk anymore so you can run away again?"

"I liked you," Arya said suddenly, looking down at her duvet cover. It was stamped with little polka dots everywhere in a light shade of purple. "I really liked you, even before this. I had the biggest crush on you when I was younger, and then we never saw each other so it all went away...and then we became friends all of a sudden and I could literally  _feel_  those feelings coming up again so I had to force them down. And it worked until you brought up this whole...thing."

She paused. Took a deep breath. Another one.

"And then it was like I was right back where I started. I liked you all over again."

Gendry was smiling at her, but his movements were still slow as he approached her bed and sat on the edge.

"Then don't you get it?" he asked. "You did have real feelings for me before. And you were too young and I was too stupid, but they were real feelings, weren't they? So how can you say that we were just playing ourselves this whole time and asking to get hurt by tricking ourselves into thinking we had any feelings for each other?" He tried to lean forward towards her, but Arya straightened her legs towards him so he couldn't get any closer.

"Arya..." His head dropped down and he shook his head slowly. "I don't get you," he whispered, sounding like he was talking more to himself than to Arya.

Arya shrugged tightly. "If you don't get me, then you shouldn't want to waste your time trying to figure me out," she said simply.

"Goddammit, Arya!" Gendry yelled, his voice jumping up much louder than the whisper he'd just uttered.

The two of them were locked in yet another staring contest. Gendry, sitting across from her while his eyes blazed bright, anger and desperation fighting for dominance, and Arya, using her blankets as a shield to cover herself while her eyes remained shielded, any emotion locked up tight so he wouldn't be able to see what she was feeling.

Honestly, Arya wasn't even sure what she was feeling right now.

"Are you really so afraid to be with someone you actually care about that you'll do whatever you can to ruin whatever bond you already have with them just to make sure you don't get hurt? Are you that scared?"

"I'm not  _scared_ ," Arya said viciously, her legs drawing back up to her chest immediately as she glared at Gendry fiercely.

"Oh, yes, you are," Gendry said, nodding his head. "If you're not scared, then what is it? You're so terrified of someone actually getting close to you and then they'll wake up one day and realize they don't like what they see."

Arya's breath came out in one heavy rush. But Gendry was staring at her openly, only honest truths coming out of his mouth.

"And you're always so quick to jump into any kind of relationship you can get into because you're so desperate for any kind of affection you can get," Arya shot out. "You always jump right into everything without thinking of what could go wrong. It's always all or nothing with you—"

"Only when I think someone is worth it in the long run."

Arya sat back against her headboard, breathing heavily.

"Listen," Gendry said. He sounded exhausted now. "Just tell me that you don't feel anything for me. Don't try to twist the truth around and say it was just our...whole situation that caused it. Just tell me right now that you don't feel a single thing for me, and I'll walk away. I'll give you whatever space you need until you're ready to be friends again. And if you're not...then, that's okay, too. I won't be fine with it, but eventually, I'll get over it."

Arya looked at him, trying to find some kind of loophole in his gaze, some kind of trick he could pull over her. There was nothing but earnest pleading.

She could tell him she liked him. She could kiss him right now,  _actually_  kiss him and get to know what his lips felt like, learn how to memorize his face and figure out what he liked, what he didn't, what he wanted to try. She could teach him what  _she_  liked, show him the right way to do everything she enjoyed. She could say one little sentence and it would all be okay.

She knew that. If she said yes, Gendry wouldn't ever hold this against her. He wouldn't even bring it up. He'd pretend like he forgot all about it. Even if she said no, that she just wanted to be his friend, he would wait for her to be ready to be his friend again, and they'd never speak of it again.

But she couldn't do that. She wanted to, she wanted to just lean over and kiss him, and kiss him, and keep kissing him until the sun came up and then again and again and again and—

Arya closed her eyes and shook her head.

Her legs swung over the side of her bed and she walked over to her desk, rifling through sheets of loose paper until she found the only one she actually cared about.

"I'll do you one better," she said and ripped the contract up.

Gendry blinked once and pursed his lips tightly. "Fine," he said. "Message received, loud and clear. I'll see you around, Arya."

He didn't slam the door when he left. Somehow, that made it even worse.


	6. Dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be home tomorrow so I'm probably going to be posting the last chapter a little bit later than usual, but the good news is that my timezone is 7 hours earlier than EST (which I feel like is the most common timezone of the people reading this story but I don't know?) so I should still be able to post on time :)

The walls were draped in gauzy white curtains and the archway was covered with flowers that twined all around until the floor. Chairs stretched all the way to the back of the long room, covered in thick white fabric that was tied to hold it in place so it would hide the plainness of the chairs underneath. Candles in tall glass cylindrical holders lined the back edge of the raised podium where the altar was. The chandelier hung low, right in the center of the ceiling, the crystals glittering in the dimly lit room.

When Sansa had taken the task of planning her own wedding (which was without a doubt the best option for everyone—if someone else had tried to plan her special day, there would have been an all-out catfight that Arya wouldn't have been so fast to stop), she had been adamant that the hall where the ceremony would be held would be decorated elegantly, tastefully, and, by Sansa's standards, simple. And, as Arya looked at it from the doorway so she could get a perfect view of the entire hall, it was actually rather simple. The white and gold color scheme of the room somehow worked to provide the effortless kind of elegant simplicity Sansa had imagined. There wasn't an obnoxious oversized heart-shaped flower archway to frame Sansa and Willas under the altar. There were no tacky decorations thrown around the hall.

It really was what Sansa had envisioned. Arya wasn't surprised that she had somehow made it all come to life. The ballroom where the reception would be, Arya thought, would be even more beautiful.

"Arya!" Margaery Tyrell called out from behind her. Arya turned to look at the tall woman standing just outside the hall for the ceremony, already dressed. Sansa had been kind enough to let her bridesmaids choose their own dresses as long as they were the same dusty rose color that matched the dress she'd picked out for Arya. Margaery's dress was made up of layer upon layer of gauze, flowing down her body delicately, with a lace illusion back etched with small flowers that also decorated the thick straps of the dress. "Sansa's looking for you. She wants you to finish your hair before they start working on her."

Margaery's own hair hadn't been done yet, but out of all the girls in Sansa's wedding party, Arya did have the shortest hair. She followed Margaery back to the bridal dressing room that had been set aside for them. It was a huge room, decorated all in white and lace. The size of the room was perfect for the large number of people bustling around the space, all professional looking women with perfect makeup and shiny hair wearing different variations of black dresses and tall black heels. They all had earpieces attached to their heads so they keep both of their hands free as they rummaged through various cases of makeup, hair products, and sewing tools.

And right in the center of it all was Sansa, sitting on the white ottoman in the middle of the room with her hair wrapped in a towel and a fluffy white robe knotted tightly around her waist. Her face was clean of all makeup, and it was slightly red, looking like she'd just washed it thoroughly.

"God, Arya," Sansa said exasperatedly when she came into the room with Margaery. "You still have to do your hair! Jennifer, can you work on my sister, please?"

Arya sat obediently in one of the chairs that had been set up at random in the room, and almost immediately, the woman named Jennifer had started attacking her freshly blow-dried hair.

By the time her hair had been carefully arranged in a waterfall braid, the room seemed to have multiplied in numbers. Catelyn had come in but had to leave a minute later because she started crying when she saw her daughter and didn't want to ruin her makeup. Somehow, it looked like there were more makeup artists and hair stylists in the room than when Arya had first sat down to get her hair done ten minutes ago.

It was another two hours before every girl in the room has their hair artfully done, their makeup applied perfectly, and their dresses put on with last minute pins and sewing emergencies taken care off swiftly and efficiently.

Sansa, who looked like she wasn't even breathing in her beautiful dress, looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath she didn't seem to be letting out any time soon. "Margaery," she said hoarsely, "get my mom, please."

Margaery, fiddling with the tail end of her side braid, disappeared and came back a few moments later with Catelyn, who immediately started crying again.

"Mom," Sansa said softly, "please. Stop crying. If we have to do your makeup all over again, we'll just be wasting more time." She closed her eyes and finally let her breath out ever so slowly. When she reopened her eyes, she faced her mother and her sister and took one of their hands in hers. "Thank you for putting up with me for the past few months."

Arya felt tears begin to prick behind her eyes, so she sniffed once and laughed. "As if I had a choice," she joked.

Sansa tried to give Arya one of her stronger glares, but the impact was watered down by the fact that she was trying to hold back tears, and her eyes were practically glittering with them. "Don't make jokes now. I'm trying to have a serious moment."

Arya bit her lip cautiously, squeezing Sansa's hand just slightly. "You have the rest of your life to have serious moments with whoever you want. But now you're supposed to be getting married, and I don't think Willas would appreciate Mom and me keeping you in here because you want to ruin your makeup for the sake of sentimentality."

Catelyn let out a watery little laugh, and carefully used the edge of her index finger to wipe under eyes. "Leave it to Arya to make sure we all stay our prettiest for Sansa's wedding by putting our priorities in order," she said, letting go of Sansa's hand and gathered the skirt of her dark blue dress and turned towards the door.

Sansa faced the mirror one last time, running her fingers along the edges of her veil as she arranged it over her head. "How do I look," she asked Arya through her reflection.

Arya came to stand behind her, shifting it this way and that so it hung straight down her back. "Like a princess—now let's go. Of all the things to be late for, and you want it to be your wedding."

"I won't be late to my wedding," Sansa said, finally moving towards the door. "And even if I am, so what? I'm the  _bride_. They have to wait for me."

"I bet Willas won't," Arya piped up as she led the group of bridesmaids and Sansa down the hall to where Catelyn was waiting. "I bet he'll take up the first girl he sees if you're even a second late."

"That's not even close to being funny, Arya," Catelyn admonished, stopping in front of the set of large double doors that led to the wedding hall.

Sansa's face had gone practically white; she had her eyes closed and her hands were clenched rather tightly at her sides, her prominent collarbone showing as she kept taking deep breaths to a rhythm in her own head.

"Hey," Arya said, snapping her fingers in front of Sansa's face. "There are a lot of people in there. You can't leave them waiting."

Sansa opened her eyes and looked back at Arya, their eyes meeting. There was a fierce sort of determination in Sansa's blue eyes, her face alight with a sort of anticipation Arya hadn't expected. "I don't care if  _they_  wait," she said. "I care about  _me_  today. And I want to get married."

Arya grinned. "Then get in line," she told her, gesturing to the back where bridesmaids and groomsmen were pairing up, "so that we can open the doors."

( O O O )

While the hall had been decorated with an elegant flair of simplicity, the ballroom where the reception was held was absolutely  _breathtaking_. White and pale pink flowers cascaded down the gold-colored walls like waterfalls, and round tables were set up on the floor around the large dance floor that dominated the center of the room, with a raised podium holding the long table draped in white tablecloth at the head of the room for Sansa and Willas to sit with their families. The room was swathed in a golden light from the chandelier reflecting off the walls, crystals twinkling every second.

The long table reserved for the Starks and Tyrells was rather beautiful, but it really wasn't even that functional.

Sansa, who had been eager to find the perfect caterer for everyone to enjoy, hadn't been able to sit down yet and she was going crazy.

"Arya, you don't understand," she said. "I'm  _starving_."

"I'll try to get you some food," Arya said to placate her.

"No, you don't  _understand_ ," she repeated urgently. "I want to be able to sit with my new husband at the head of that expensive table I ordered and eat the expensive food I chose, on the expensive china I picked out. But no one is letting me get past the first few tables without ambushing me and telling me how happy they are for me."

Arya raised one eyebrow mockingly. "What did you think was going to happen at your wedding, Sansa?" she asked. "As you said earlier, you're the  _bride_. Did you think that everyone was just going to leave you alone for the entire night?"

Sansa sighed mournfully and cast a look at the locked door of the bathroom. "In a perfect world," she bemoaned.

Arya laughed and stood up, brushing off the skirt of her gown. "Okay. I'm going to get you some food. Not a lot, don't worry. And then I'm going to bring it back to you so you can get something in your system before you pass out from hunger. And  _then_ , we're going to announce that you'll be having your first dance with Willas, and right after, you'll be escorted right to the table where you'll be able to eat all you want, and no one can make you get up because you're already sitting and no one would do that to a bride."

Sansa was looking at Arya with astonishment. "I knew I chose you to be my maid of honor for a reason," she breathed. "Margaery would have just created a scene so I could stuff as many dinner rolls down my dress as I could."

"I mean, we can always do that. I tried one of the dinner rolls, and trust me, you did well on the caterer."

Sansa laughed and stood up, smoothing down her dress. She had opted to get a second, simpler dress for the reception so she would be able to move around freely, but it was just as pretty as her first dress. It was a sleeveless plain tulle dress with a hem that rested just above her knees and a lace bodice with a high collar. But for some reason, she still chose to wear her white satin heels, to Arya's amazement. Ginger Rogers really didn't have anything on Sansa Stark.

( O O O )

An hour later, Sansa was happily sitting right in the center of the table, taking slow and savory bites out of her food while Willas gazed at her adoringly from the seat next to her. Arya was sitting a few chairs down, sipping on champagne and spearing small bites of chicken onto her fork. A few minutes into eating her food, she spotted a familiar face traveling between tables, and she straightened in her chair.

Arya had seen glimpses of Gendry during the ceremony, but he had been lost in the sea of faces sprawled out in front of her under the altar. By the time they'd made it to the ballroom, Arya had been caught up in her sister, guests approaching her, and trying to find her own way to the food.

As if he felt her eyes on him, Gendry turned around, and their eyes met. They looked at each other from across the ballroom for several uncomfortable moments before he slowly motioned with a slight tilt of his head for her to come over to him. Arya nodded once and set her fork down, picking up her glass of champagne while she stepped down from the podium and began the walk across the room.

When she finally made it in front of Gendry, he gave her a smile that she felt pained to return. "You look beautiful," he said hesitantly. Arya tried to smile but then she remembered that she already was, and even though it wasn't a large one, it was all she could bring herself to manage at this point. He seemed to notice her discomfort because he cleared his throat awkwardly.

"How's Sansa doing?" he asked.

Arya looked back over her shoulder where Sansa had one hand resting on Willas's shoulder, her body turned completely towards him as he spoke eagerly. They were both smiling unbelievably wide. She wondered if their cheeks were hurting.

"She's doing...wonderful. Really. Even while she was complaining about not being able to eat, she couldn't stop smiling."

Arya turned back to face Gendry, her eyebrows furrowed together slightly. She could practically feel the permanent wrinkle settling in between her eyebrows. "How are you?" she asked.

"I'm doing good," he responded, just a bit too quickly to seem natural.

She wanted to kick herself, she really did.

They stood there in silence for a few more moments, Arya with her hands clasped loosely behind her back as she looked down at the floor, her lips pursed, and Gendry with his arms hanging limply at his sides as he tried to find something over Arya's shoulder to pretend to be interested in.

"I wanted to apologize—"

"I wanted to ask you—"

They both stopped short, trying to let the other speak first as they opened their mouths at the same time.

It ended with them lapsing back into silence once again. Arya's heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest from how hard it was pounding inside her rib cage. "You go first," she said. She really wasn't ready to apologize yet.

"No, no. You go first."

And of course, Gendry would want to hear that apology.

Because he deserved it.

Because she had been a total bitch to him the last time they saw each other.

"Okay," she said. "I, um...I—I just wanted to tell you that I...apologize. I'm sorry. For the last time we...saw each other."

Gendry looks at her like he forgot what they even said the last time they saw each other. Then his eyes clear and he nods a few times, his head bobbing up and down rapidly like a bobblehead. "Right," he said. "I know that you were...mad at me then. And I was pushing you to say something you obviously didn't feel, so I guess, in a way...it's a good thing. That you did it. I won't let myself get...caught up in anything like you said. I just...wanted to say that I still want us to be friends."

Arya wants to kick herself and cry herself to sleep. She wants to yell at herself about how she's a horrible person who doesn't know how to hold on to something good when she has it right in her grasp.

She's not one of those people who doesn't know what she has until it's gone.

She's someone who knows how good it is and destroys it because she doesn't think she deserves it.

But this time...this time, she doesn't yell at Gendry, or tell him to leave her alone, or kick him out. This time, she smiles because even though she knows she's lost her chance with him, she can still hold on to  _this_. Their friendship.

"Wanna dance?" she asks.

He looks surprised. "I thought you hate dancing," he said. "I mean, Arya, I'll dance with you all night if you want, but...really, neither of us knows how to dance. Like, at all."

"When has that ever stopped you from doing something before?" she asked.

Gendry's eyebrows rose at the challenge she presented in front of him, and a slow smile began lifting the corners of his mouth. "Okay, Stark. Let's dance."

( O O O )

Gendry made good on his promise. They didn't dance together for the whole night, but they  _did_  dance for as long as Arya wanted. Granted, she got frustrated after about four minutes, but she kept her hand in his. She was reluctant to let go.

They continued their slow and rather awkward movements across the dance floor, stumbling into each other and stepping on each others' feet every other few steps, but this was good. This was familiar—this was normal.

It was only when a slower song came on that Arya took a step back. The other songs that had been playing were slow, but this was like...a  _slow_  slow song. She didn't quite know what the difference was herself, but whatever it was, it set off some kind of warning bell in Arya's head that had her letting go of Gendry's hand.

He let go of her without preamble, and they both walked to the table he'd seated himself at in silence.

She sat in the chair next to his, arranging the layers of her dress around her so she could sit comfortably and not rip anything by accident. "What did you think of the ceremony?" she asked him after several minutes of uncomfortable silence.

Gendry looked up from the spot of tablecloth he'd been focusing on intently and his eyebrows drew together as if he forgot he was at a wedding and had just seen Arya's sister get married not even three hours ago. "Oh," he said distantly. "It was...it was really nice. Sansa really knows how to pull off a wedding. Honestly, she should pick that up as a career."

Arya cocked her head to the side. "You know, that might not be such a bad idea.  _Stark Wedding Planning_. She could make it work."

"Too bad she's already married. She could have been the real life Jennifer Lopez from  _The Wedding Planner_."

"Nah, she's too much of a romantic to be like Jennifer Lopez in that movie."

"She was totally a romantic."

"Uh, no, she wasn't. That was literally the whole point of the movie? To show how Matthew McConaughey made her believe in love again?"

"She was already a romantic before she met Matthew McConaughey—she just had way too many issues to work through."

_Well, Jesus, doesn't that sound familiar_ , Arya thought to herself bitterly.

"Yeah, well, I still think—wait, when did you see  _The Wedding Planner_?" Arya asked, suddenly interested.

Gendry pretended not to hear her. He only stood up to ask if she wanted to dance again.

And really, what was she supposed to say to that except for yes?

( O O O )

Okay, so Arya and Gendry are starting to feel more like themselves again. It's a relief. If their fight had been the other way around (which, Arya realizes, never would have happened because she would  _never_  have told Gendry about her feelings for him) and he had reacted the same way she had, she would have held on to that grudge for longer than necessary. Longer than anyone had ever held a grudge in their entire life.

Holding grudges had kind of become Arya's  _thing_. It was like after she finished school and no longer had to channel all of her energy into dance seven days a week, she decided to use her new free time to hold grudges.

She really hated  _things_. She wanted all  _things_  to disappear. Like the  _thing_  that had existed between Arya and Gendry for the past few weeks. The  _thing_  that was still kind of present between them right now. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, because she still wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but all Arya knew was that she hated  _things_ , and she wanted it gone.

But if there was anything awkward between them now, it was definitely in Arya's own imagination. Because while she would have held on to that grudge if their roles had been reversed during The Fight, as Arya liked to call it in her head, Gendry meant it when he said he would let it go and be ready for her to come back to him when she was ready, whether it was as a friend or a girlfriend, or whatever it was. If she had ignored him the second she saw him across the ballroom, he would have been hurt, true, but he would have made his peace with it eventually.

She really didn't deserve him. Maybe that's why she decided to do something about it halfway through her fourth dance of the night in Gendry's not-so-capable hands.

By the time they sit back down, while Arya dutifully ignores the curious looks she's getting from literally every single member of her family up on that raised table as they watch her sitting with Gendry after she'd resolutely told them they'd decided to break up, she tries to force the words out before she loses her nerve. The issue with that, though, is that she's never had that much nerve, to begin with when it came to Gendry. It's not like she has much ground to work with over here.

"Do you think..." she starts off cautiously, avoiding his eyes as she stares down at the tablecloth. "Um...do you think we can talk, maybe? Tonight? Or tomorrow, probably, because the whole..." She waves a hand vaguely at the room. "You know. The wedding thing. I'll probably be busy tonight, but...tomorrow..."

Gendry looks at her carefully. It's like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to take it back.

But she doesn't say anything else. There's nothing left for her to say anymore. All she can do anymore is wait for Gendry to answer and pray that she's still enough for him, hope that he can give her a chance again, even after their mess of a fight that had ended with Arya throwing him out not once, but  _twice_  the other night. Hoping and waiting had never done Arya much good before, but this was  _Gendry_. She'd wait if she had to.

He stays quiet for another beat of silence before he nods his head twice. "Yeah," he says. "I think we should definitely—talk. Talking is good. We need to...do that." He was stuttering over his words, which was, surprisingly, a good sign from Gendry. It meant that he was thinking about what this conversation could mean. It meant he was open to discussion, instead of planning on shutting her down immediately when they finally did talk.

"Great," she breathed. The relief she felt that he had even agreed to speak with her after their truce for the wedding was so strong she could cry. "I'll just...come over. Tomorrow. Um, we could—"

"Order Chinese food?" he asked wryly, an eyebrow raised knowingly.

Arya grinned at him. "You're starting to know me a bit too well, Waters," she said teasingly.

Gendry snorted. "Please," he said, sitting back in his chair and drinking from his glass of champagne. "We crossed that line years ago."

( O O O )

"I think it's time for my speech soon," Arya mumbled, clicking her shoes together methodically.

Gendry looked over at Arya, where she had decided that she needed to slump against the wall of the bathroom and splay her legs out in front of her like a five-year-old trying to take up all the room they could just because they wanted to.

"But what about your dress?" he'd asked.

Arya had sent an infamous glare his way, and damn, did it feel good to do that again with him. "Oh,  _please_. You can eat off this goddamned floor, it's so clean," she'd told him, and promptly thrown herself onto the shiny tiles of the bathroom floor unceremoniously, trying to maneuver around her gauzy skirts.

Now, she had slowly lost any strength to keep herself sitting upright. Over the past twenty minutes, she'd slowly begun to slide down the wall, her skirts riding up the floor as she did so.

"Did you ever finish that speech?" he asked her.

The truth was, she had. Right after Gendry had left—right after she had thrown Gendry out, she reminded herself—Arya had sat down at her desk and written out an entirely new draft for her maid of honor speech. It hadn't been good, but it had been  _something_. She continued revising it over the next three days until she had finally come up with something she considered to be passable. Sansa, at least, would like it. And really, what else mattered except for that?

"Yep," Arya declared proudly. "Finished it, revised it, revised it again, revised it again, then, and I know this might shock you, but I revised it  _again_ , and then I—"

"No, wait. Let me guess. Did you revise it again?" Gendry asked dryly.

"No way, how did you get that on the first try?" she shot back without missing a beat. "After that, I made a few more quick changes, moved a sentence or two around, tried to add some nicer words so they'd be fit for the  _wedding_ , and  _then_ , I finally finished the damn thing after turning it into something that's barely passable."

"Can I hear it?"

"Absolutely. As soon as Sansa tells me it's time to stand up in front of everyone and deliver it."

"Is that why you're hiding in here with me?" Gendry asked, casting a glance at the door she'd locked as soon as she dragged him in the ladies' bathroom.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Arya replied immediately.

Gendry sighed, suddenly feeling very tired. "Arya, come on," he said. "You knew this speech was coming. And you finally finished it. And you clearly like it, or else you would be shitting on it right this very second."

Arya held up a finger in his face. "I do believe I said that the speech ended up becoming something barely passable. Now, I don't know about you, but to  _me_ , that sure as hell doesn't sound like the words of a maid of honor who actually likes what they ended up writing in the end." She looked away from Gendry's prying eyes and focused on a small crack in one of the black tiles.

All of the cracks that dotted the black and white tiles Arya and Gendry were currently sitting on seemed to have been placed there on purpose. They'd been filled in with gold paint, making the eternally polished floor look even shinier than they already were.

"I think you like to doubt yourself," Gendry said softly. He didn't lower his voice to sound gentler. Instead, it sounded like he was observing her from afar and had just spoken his thoughts aloud. It was as if he didn't even realize she was sitting right next to him anymore. "I think you want other people to doubt you even more than you doubt yourself."

Arya folded her arms across her stomach, using it as a shield. Against what, she didn't think she would ever be one hundred percent sure of. Some days, she wanted to protect herself against Gendry. Other days, it was her family. Most days, she just wanted to be protected from herself.

"That's ridiculous," she said, but her words didn't have the venom she wanted. They fell limply in the air between them, non-threatening and meaningless. She didn't have the energy to try and sound like she had any fight in her right now.

"Tell me I'm wrong," he challenged. "I've never seen someone get so down on themselves for no good reason and then look at everyone else like they  _want_  them to agree with everything they're saying—"

"Um, Gendry?" Arya said, pointing to the mirror above them. "I don't know if you've ever heard of this before, but have you looked in the mirror lately?" she asked. "You're basically describing yourself."

Maybe her words were harsh, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She tried to justify it by telling herself that he was basically saying the exact same thing to her, and he didn't seem to be losing any sleep over it. This normality that was hanging delicately over their heads felt like it was a thundercloud approaching an otherwise blue sky...and it was bound to start raining sooner or later.

God, how many times would she ruin this? She'd just resolved to try and have a good night with Gendry so she could talk to him tomorrow night, over Chinese food and shitty wine like they always did, and instead, here she was. Sitting on the bathroom floor wallowing in her own pitiful self-deprecation and lashing out at Gendry when he gave her exactly what she wanted and called her out on it.

"Sorry," she whispered hoarsely, her words coming out of her throat rather scratchy. "I keep ruining things for some reason. Maybe you're right. I want everyone to doubt me so I can yell at them for it."

"It gives you an excuse to run away," he said quietly.

Arya didn't even bother trying to deny it. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Well," Gendry said, suddenly standing up from the floor with an abrupt burst of energy. "I'm not letting that happen today." He held out his hand to her and waited for her to fit it into his before pulling her up to stand in front of him. "Come on, Stark. It's time for your maid of honor speech."

( O O O )

The second Arya returns to the ballroom, Sansa spots her from all the way across the room. She doesn't even pay any attention to Gendry coming in behind her—she just gives her younger sister a look that says she's grateful she didn't run away before it was time to make her speech.

Honestly, Arya is still wondering why she hasn't done that yet. It's like everyone's been waiting for her to come in, although she knows Sansa would have told Ned not to announce it was time for Arya's speech before she was even in the room. Coming back in to find everyone's eyes actually on her would have done nothing good for her nerves.

It's just that she  _feels_  like everyone's eyes are already on her. Truthfully, it's only the people who were sitting at the tables closest to the door, and they had only turned around because they heard someone coming in. Arya knew a few of the guests by face; she smiled at them politely as they recognized her and said hello as she passed through the gaps between tables. She tried to skirt along the edges of the walls as best as she could while Gendry disappeared to sit back down at his own table, right where he could get a perfect view of Arya's speech.

When she gets up to the table, she squeezes Sansa's shoulder as she passes by.

Sansa catches her hand in hers and turns her head slightly to the right so she could see Arya. "Hey," she whispers quietly. "Where have you been? No one could find you for the past twenty minutes." She must be thinking it has something to do with Gendry, and it really does, but right now, Arya's not in the mood to divulge all of her secrets to her sister in the middle of her own wedding.

Sansa really must be invested in Arya's love life if she was willing to turn away from all of her guests and  _still_  manage to pry her sister for whatever information she could get out of her. Arya felt a rush of affection for her older sister. Her sickeningly pink bedroom from her childhood, her closet of frilly clothes, and the bathroom in hers and Willas's apartment that smelled like a shrine to Chanel No. 5 aside, that affection didn't budge one bit. "I was just—in the bathroom. Trying to steady my nerves," she explained.

Sansa raised an eyebrow. "For twenty minutes," she repeated slowly as if trying to help Arya catch a hint.

She didn't need to catch any kind of hint.

"For twenty minutes," Arya confirmed.

"With some help or..." Sansa trailed off as Arya squeezed her shoulder once more and went back to her seat without answering. From a few chairs down, Arya caught the wink Sansa sent her way, and she rolled her eyes but didn't shake her head no. Instead, Arya shrugged her shoulders, letting some of the hope she'd been trying to keep under control show on her face.

Was this what sisters did? Did they have secret, silent conversations with just their facial expressions and subtle body movements mid-wedding where everyone was probably looking at them? Was this normal for two sisters to do?

Even if it was, even if it wasn't, Arya didn't care. It's not like her relationship with Sansa had ever been considered anything close to  _normal_.

It's only a few minutes later when Ned stands up to make his own toast. Arya can see Sansa's eyes start to well up with tears even from her spot at the table, and he hasn't even spoken yet. Ned looks like he's about to start crying as well, but everyone knows he'll hold it in.

"I want to thanks everyone for coming tonight to see my oldest daughter get married to one of the kindest men I've had the pleasure of meeting. I'm...at a loss when it comes to speaking about how proud I am that Sansa has made a life for herself both independently, and as well as a partner to Willas. She's always dreamed of a big white wedding and seeing that she's finally gotten it, well. No one can deny that she deserves as much happiness as she can get and not a bit less." Ned clears his throat and picks up his glass of champagne. "I only know how much Willas loves Sansa because of how fearless he was when he told me he was planning on proposing to her. He told me that it wasn't my decision to say yes or no for Sansa before she even knew a question was going to be asked, let alone a question like this. He told me that he had decided a long time ago that he wanted to marry my daughter, and that if I had any objections to it, then I should have done something about it a long time ago."

Willas was hiding his red face behind his hands as Sansa stared at him with such adoration on her face that Arya couldn't even join in with the laughing guests. She felt like looking at the two of them right now was like spying on a private moment.

"So," Ned continued, "I think that I, as Sansa's father, am probably the person most qualified to know when something is good for her. Apart from her mother, of course." He smiled down at Catelyn for a brief moment. "And I can say without any doubt that Willas is the best thing that's ever happened to her. Cheers."

Sansa was already crying, and Arya knew she wasn't imagining how rough her father's voice had gotten towards the end of his speech. She wiped at her own eyes and sniffed once, already standing up for her own speech.

Willas nudged Sansa and gestured to Arya with a slight movement of his chin. Sansa looked up at Arya and smiled widely at her. She had wiped away her tears, and though her cheeks were a bit red, she still looked flawless. She mouthed  _Good luck_  in Arya's direction. Arya smiled back at her nervously, mouthing back her thanks, and turned to the crowd.

Gendry's eyes met hers from his table.

She picked up her glass, and he winked at her, nodding once in encouragement.

"Um. Hi," she started out shakily. "I, uh, I know most people here know me well enough to know that I am...probably not the person best suited to be up here right now." There were a few polite laughs in the sea of guests, and Arya smiled tightly for a second. "To be honest, I was surprised when Sansa asked me to be her maid of honor. Most people don't know this, but we didn't exactly get along when we were younger," she said sarcastically, prompting a few more laughs. "But as we got older, we realized we didn't have to make it so hard for each other. And then we ended up becoming pretty close. But still, I never imagined she would ask me to do this for her. Sansa's pretty particular about how she likes things to be done, so I was at a loss when she asked  _me_  to take on the responsibility of planning everything that she couldn't. But I guess I underestimated my sister since she didn't let me do a single thing by myself. And it's not because she didn't have any faith in me, because if that were the case, then I wouldn't be up here right now. But it was because she always knows when I need help and when I'm too afraid to ask for it. And that's just one of the things that make Sansa so great." Arya turned to look at Sansa, who looked like she was about to start crying again.

"I think that a lot of people underestimate her, which is a tragedy because she's so wonderful. Even three weeks before her wedding, she still found every opportunity to help me with whatever I was dealing with, and she did it without a second thought. I know most sisters who don't get along when they're younger like to say that they wish they had always been close to each other, but I wouldn't give up the years we spent fighting for anything, because all it did was bring us together as close as we are now. And Willas...who I've known for most of my life, somehow makes Sansa into a better person than she already was, which really tells you all you need to know about their relationship. I've known them separately, and I've known them together, and while neither of them are the type of people that  _need_  to be with someone to feel whole, I can't even begin to express how grateful I am that they have each other."

She took a sip from her glass, trying not to drink everything in it, and sat down.

She still felt a little shaky on her feet, but the feeling of the chair beneath her grounded her.

Sansa was openly crying again, leaning into Willas as he whispered something in her ear. Arya could hear her laugh from her own seat.

"That speech was beautiful, Arya," Margaery said genuinely from the seat next to her.

Arya smiled at her and nodded once. "Thanks. I hope Sansa thinks it was good, too."

Margaery snorted. "Are you kidding me? She probably wants that entire speech written on her tombstone after she dies from a tsunami of emotions."

The glass was still half full, so Arya quickly drained what was left of it and stood up.

The second Arya got to her chair, Sansa stood up and hugged Arya tightly, throwing her arms around her neck. "That was amazing," she whispered into her neck.

Arya grinned and wrapped her arms around Sansa's waist. "I'm glad you liked it," she said, leaning back and moving Sansa's hair back from her face. "Stop crying. You're going to ruin your makeup."

"As if I didn't make sure to only use waterproof makeup," Sansa scoffed. "What do you think I am, some kind of amateur?"

Someone cleared their throat from below the raised table, and Arya pulled back from Sansa long enough to see Gendry standing there.

"Hey," she breathed.

"That was an incredible speech," he said immediately. "Absolutely wonderful."

Sansa held Arya a little closer to her and smiled proudly. "Wasn't it just the best? I have to start writing my speech for her wedding now if I want to top it."

Arya blushed bright red and ducked her head. "Okay, guys, calm down," she muttered. "It wasn't that great." She was still flushed with pride and nerves, but she faced Gendry with a shy smile. "Thanks," she said quietly.

They stood like that for a few more beats, Arya and Gendry looking at each other with Sansa glancing between them.

Finally, Sansa coughed once and let go of Arya. "Well, I'm going to sit with my husband," she said.

Arya looked over at her. "What?" she said blankly.

Sansa rolled her eyes and kissed Arya's cheek. "Have fun. Go dance. Dance with each other. Dance with other people. Go eat some food somewhere other than this table." She smirked. "Go back to the bathroom."

Arya kicked her swiftly in her exposed ankle, but Sansa only gave them one last parting smile before returning to her seat.

Gendry helped her down from the table, his eyes bright. "Your speech really was amazing," he said sincerely.

Her blush only deepened, and she lowered her head so she was looking down at the floor as she shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, well." She shook her head. "I had someone breathing down my neck for three weeks making sure I actually wrote it, so."

"Oh, come on. You can't deny all credit," Gendry said as they began to walk back to his table. "You were amazing, and—and that was all you."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have actually written anything if you hadn't kept buying me frappuccinos at Starbucks," she pointed out. "Let's be honest, I probably would have convinced Sansa to let me pawn the speech off on Margaery or something."

Gendry shook his head confidently. "Nope," he declared as he sat down in his chair and grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. "I think you wanted to do the speech the whole time but it took a lot of work to get the confidence up so you could actually do it."

Arya looked down at the table and stole the glass he'd just gotten, taking a sip from it before passing it back to him. "Maybe," she said, shrugging her shoulders carelessly.

They sat quietly next to each other for the next few minutes, but...

It wasn't a bad kind of quiet. It wasn't the uncomfortable silence she'd been afraid of for so long. It was a nice kind of quiet that let them sit with their own thoughts for a few minutes without dealing with the pressure of always having a continuous stream of conversation coming out. She had really missed this, even though there had only been three days where they didn't talk. But those three days were incredibly hard for Arya, especially knowing that she was the reason why they hadn't spoken. She had ruined it, but Gendry was giving her another chance.

Finally, Gendry looked up from the table and glanced over at Arya. "Hey," he said, poking her in the arm.

Arya looked at him, her eyebrows raised high on her forehead. He was giving her some kind of look, both hopeful and anxious at the same time. His lighthearted attitude of the entire night had helped to ease the tension between them that Arya had been so scared of, and he just kept on proving how wonderful he was by making such an effort with her when really it should have been  _her_  that tried to smooth everything over. Her heart ached with how much she appreciated him, admired him, loved him—as a friend, of course, but that tugging on her heartstrings told her that her feelings for him might be a bit stronger than what she'd originally thought.

"What's up?" she asked, still waiting for him to say what he wanted.

Gendry opened his mouth but didn't speak for a few more seconds, looking out at the dance floor and then back at Arya, still waiting patiently. He shrugged his shoulders, as if he was telling himself  _Fuck it_ , and raised his eyebrows. "Wanna dance?"

( O O O )

Sansa stopped by the house after the wedding to say goodbye to everyone. Willas had insisted they book their flight for immediately after their wedding, declaring that it was romantic in its rushed state. Sansa had been resistant, but she'd eventually given in and agreed when he told her he was getting them two first class seats so she'd be able to catch up on all the sleep she'd be missing out on after they spent a few hours together as  _husband and wife_ , as Sansa had not-so-subtly put it when she'd explained it to Arya. It had led to them having to catch a plane that was set to take off at six in the morning. They had decided to go away for a month and travel across Europe, spending each week in a different country.

By the time all of the guests had left, it was one in the morning. Sansa and Willas had disappeared immediately to go to their apartment and do whatever consisted of spending time together as husband and wife, while Arya had followed Catelyn and Ned home, practically falling asleep in the car.

When Sansa finally knocked on the door, it was just past two in the morning.

She came in to say goodbye to Arya, who had just finished putting on her pajamas for bed. She was wearing a pair of black leggings and an oversized beige open knit sweater that hung off one of her shoulders and had stitches wide enough to see the black tank top she'd put on underneath. Her hair had been thrown up in a messy bun on top of her head, some of the curls managing to escape.

"Hey," she said, coming into the room and putting her tote bag on Arya's dresser.

Arya turned around from where she stood in her closet, putting her heels back on the shelf. "Oh. Hey."

"Willas is in the car, and he's already texted me like seven times to hurry my ass up because I'm taking too long," she said, rolling her eyes and holding up her phone. "Like it's my fault that Mom took one look at me with the wedding ring on my finger and started crying. She spent the past fifteen minutes hugging me and crying about how happy she was that  _I'm_  finally happy."

"Well, what did you expect?" Arya asked, climbing into her bed and burrowing herself under the blankets. "She's seeing you go off on your honeymoon and then when you come home, you'll be, like... _married_  married. Like, really married."

Sansa wrinkled her eyebrows together and joined Arya on the bed, laying down on top of the blankets after she kicked off her sneakers. "I have no idea what that even means. I'm already married. You were there. You walked down the aisle right before I did. How much more married could I get?"

"No, like when you get home...you'll really start your life with Willas."

Sansa shook her head. "No. We started our lives together a long time ago. Only now, we just wear this."  _This_  was Sansa's wedding ring. It was a plain silver wedding band that she now wore stacked on top of her engagement ring.

"Then what was the point of getting married?" Arya asked, yawning.

Sansa looked at her like she was crazy. "Because. I like knowing he's...mine. I mean, he's always been mine, but I like knowing that we did it in front of everyone. I like knowing that if something ever God forbid happens...we were able to make it official in front of everyone we cared about."

Arya couldn't think of a response to that, so she just stayed quiet and picked at a loose thread from her comforter.

"You should probably go downstairs to Willas," she says softly.

Sansa shifts so she's leaning all of her weight on one of her arms and sitting on her side to face Arya. "What's wrong?"

Arya shrugs, the sheets rustling with the movement against them. "Nothing."

Sansa rolled her eyes and sat up all the way, putting her back against the headboard and curling her legs up to her chest, her sock-covered feet still hidden under the blankets. "Don't give me shit, Arya," she says. "I was at my wedding tonight, and I still somehow managed to pay enough attention to see you and Gendry tonight. What happened?"

She tries to shrug her shoulders again but Arya doesn't want to just  _not_  answer her.

Also, she feels like her head is going to split from overthinking, so it's not like she has a real choice or anything.

"Well," she begins hesitantly, "you know that we...broke up. The other day. A few days ago, I mean," she said. Sansa nodded, patiently waiting for her to continue. Her phone started vibrating. "You should get that," Arya said, pointing.

Sansa lets out a noise of frustration and taps the screen, holding it up to her ear. "I am having a heart to heart with my sister, Willas, and if you try to interrupt me one more time, I will take her with me on our honeymoon and leave you in our apartment all month." She hung up and looked back at Arya, her face completely smooth like she hadn't just snapped at her new husband.

Arya raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"He'll be fine," Sansa said, waving away her concerns. "He's acting like we don't have two more hours until we have to be at the airport."

"But...traffic..."

"Arya," Sansa said sternly. " _Talk_."

So she did. Not for too long, because she didn't want to see how much of Sansa's time she could take up before Willas got  _really_  mad, but...she talked. For the first time in what felt like months when it had only been a few weeks, she actually put her thoughts into words and told Sansa everything she was feeling and how she didn't know what to do or how to deal with it.

When she finished, Sansa pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'm sure you guys will work it out," she said with finality, and then got up.

Arya stared after her incredulously and sat up in her bed, suddenly feeling very awake. "I'm sorry, what? You're sure we'll  _work it out_? That's the best you can do?" she asked.

Sansa leaned over so she could tie her white sneakers, yanking the laces tightly. "Yeah," she said conversationally. "Because you guys have been friends forever. I mean,  _I_  can't imagine you guys not being friends." She finished tying her shoes and straightened up, squinting suspiciously at Arya. "If there's a part of you that can imagine a life where Gendry  _isn't_  in it, then...you should be okay. But if you can't imagine him not being there, whether it's as his girlfriend or his best friend, then you're going to work it out."

Arya thought over Sansa's answer and bit her lip. "What if I can't imagine it, but he can?" she asked nervously.

Sansa laughed and walked over to give Arya a kiss on the cheek. She shook her head at Arya and began walking to the door. "Oh, sweetie," she said even as she continued walking. "If that's what you think, then you really are blind."

( O O O )

"You're supposed to be at Gendry's."

Arya looked up from her cereal bowl to find Jon staring at her, his hand still on the doorknob.

"Oh," she said. "Hello."

"You're supposed to be at Gendry's," he repeated.

She nodded. "Yep. I'm going over there later today. But I deserve to eat some breakfast first, don't you think?"

Jon walked into the house and closed the door behind him, joining her at the table. "I think you need to get over there as fast as you can to fix whatever you two messed up," he said.

Arya paused and peeked up at him from under her lashes, her head bent over her spoon. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"It means you guys aren't together even though it's really obvious you both want to be."

Her spoon clattered to the table and Arya covered her face with her hands. "I'm really sick of everyone telling me what I want without even bothering to ask if they have any idea what it is," she said, voice muffled.

"Okay, fine," Jon said. "Do you want to be with him?"

She removed her hands so she could glare at him. "That's not the point," she mumbled under her breath.

Jon sighed. "You two are probably the most stubborn people in the world," he said.

"Yeah, well."

"You know, it's better if you just don't get together for real. It's better if you just stay apart because you two in a real relationship would be like hell."

"Oh? How do you figure that?"

"All day we'd have to hear the arguing. Every second it would be something new. To be honest, I don't have the patience to hear it from both of you."

Arya looked at him closely, but Jon's face betrayed nothing. "Really?" she asked, and he nodded. Just like that. A simple nod. She snorted. "Your reverse psychology won't work on me, or whatever it is that you're trying to do to get me to go over there—"

"I thought you said you were going over there later today anyway."

Arya glared at him again. She was getting really tired of having to do that all the time.

He stared at her. She stared at him.

Finally, she dropped her spoon back into her bowl and stood up. "Fine," she said, throwing her hands up. "I'm going. See? You're forcing me to leave without even having some breakfast. What kind of a brother are you?"

"Technically, I'm not really your brother," he called after her.

The door slamming behind her as she stormed out was her only response.

It was a shame that she didn't stay a bit longer, or she would have seen the satisfied smirk on Jon's face as he pulled her cereal towards her and dug in.

( O O O )

Gendry answered the door on the third knock. As soon as he saw her standing there, he opened his mouth, probably to tell her that she could still use her key, but Arya spoke first.

"Hey."


	7. That's Not What I Meant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank the orchestral instrumentals from Les Miserables for giving me some beautiful music to write to, and for making the process of writing this story like 10x more emotional than it should have been because literally nothing that sad even happened and yet I cried so much? Also, thanks to Pacemaker for keeping my ass on track while I struggled to write this story two weeks in advance and not slack off because I kept convincing myself I had time. Nonetheless, if you guys liked this story, thank you so much, and thank you all for your lovely and kind reviews, you have absolutely no idea how much they mean to me (unless you also write fanfic, which yeah you do have an idea) :)

They talk for two hours. It's not even ten in the morning yet, and Arya is still in her pajamas, but they sit on his couch and they talk. It's awkward at first when they try to get all of their questions out first thing as soon as they sit down, but eventually, they find their own rhythm and work through each of their issues one at a time so they don't get too overwhelmed with anything.

"I missed you," Arya admits at one point. "Like, a lot. Even before we started this whole thing, I missed you when you weren't there. It was like...like I was trying so hard to focus on not missing you because we weren't  _together_  but because I was putting all my attention on not missing you, I kept thinking about you, and that just led to me missing you all over again."

"Was that, like, a romantic thing?" Gendry asked. He was sitting on the couch next to her, but they had both turned their bodies so they were facing each other completely.

"I mean." Arya blushed. "Yeah, I think it was."

"For how long?"

She knew what he was asking. Not just how long she missed him, but how long she had kept her feelings to herself. "I think I never really got over my crush on you because I just kind of...pushed it aside when we became friends? So I never let it get in the way, and it didn't. But it was never really...resolved, either. Like, there would be times when you would go on a date with a girl, or I'd see you post a picture with some girl I had never met before, so I would automatically get jealous, like it was a reflex reaction, but I would always just tell myself it wasn't a big deal, that I was just worried you would become better friends with them instead of me."

"And now?" he asked.

Arya considered her answer carefully, biting her lip and curling her toes from inside her socks. She had only taken the time to jam her feet into some sneakers before leaving the house, and she'd kicked them off as soon as she got to Gendry's apartment.

"Now...I still do. Have feelings for you, I mean. They've been rather...prominent since you texted me the first time that night. And I've been trying to get rid of them, but..." She let her sentence trail off and she dropped her shoulders without much enthusiasm.

"Then why—"

"Why did I push you away when you confronted me about your feelings?" she asked.

Gendry nodded wordlessly.

"Because I was so used to putting those feelings away that I never even thought you would actually like me back. And when I first came to you and told you I wanted to end this, it was because I didn't want them to get in the way anymore. But then we started it up again and I made myself a promise to go into it more cautiously this time around. Like, the first time, I just kind of jumped into it without thinking. But then we agreed to keep on going and I decided I would be more careful. And it was working, and then, of course, you had to go and tell me you liked me, and I just...I got scared."

"Why?"

"Because...I was worried that if I did say yes then you wouldn't be as invested as I was, maybe? I'm still not even sure why I decided to react the way I did, because it was  _awful_."

"I'm so sorry," he said.

"Don't be. I was horrible to you that night. I can't even think of how terrible I was to you without wanting to cry, I—"

"I mean for the past few years. I've been so blind to everything you've been thinking, and I..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Arya said. "It's not like I was obvious about it or anything."

"No, you really weren't. I wasn't able to tell at all."

"The only person who seemed to know anything was Sansa, of  _course_ ," Arya said, rolling her eyes. "She told me after we started 'dating' that she knew I had a crush on you the whole time."

Gendry let out his breath in a slow, long exhale, his eyes closing as he leaned back against the couch. "I just...wish that we had known about the other sooner. Made everything so much easier."

"Yeah, well, if we made things easy for each other, we wouldn't be Arya and Gendry, would we?" Arya asked ruefully.

"But you know, they don't have to be," he said carefully. "We don't always have to make things hard for each other every second of the day. We can...let things go and talk about something when it bothers us. We don't have to always be on opposite sides." He opened his eyes again and moved closer to her, leaning forward intently. "Look, I...didn't know that you felt anything for me, which isn't anyone's fault. And then I tried to push you into saying something you clearly weren't ready for, and you reacted in a harsh way. But..."

"But we're back here now and you want to see if we can try and make something work," Arya finished for him when his sentence trailed off, looking up at him with something like hope in her eyes.

"Exactly."

Arya bit her lip as she shook her ankle thoughtfully. "I think if we actually try to talk, then maybe something..."

"But let me guess," he said. "Not right now?"

Arya shook her head. "No. I like you. And you like me, right?" He nodded once, but he didn't look her in the eye, probably still too nervous to actually see what thoughts and emotions were playing across her face. "I think you're right. But I want slow. I want to know we're not rushing into anything. Because you tried to rush into something at the rehearsal dinner and I tried to rush you out of it, and it was just a mess. I don't want that to happen again."

"I can do slow," he offered.

Arya smiled. "Really?"

"Yeah."

The two of them sat back and looked down at the floor, listening to the clock ticking away on the clock.

"Hey, do you think we can get some breakfast?" Arya asked. "Jon rushed me out of the house this morning."

Gendry grinned at her. "I can do breakfast."

( O O O )

Sansa calls her the next day from London at noon. "Hey, so I have a question for you," she says over the crackling static of the phone. Arya can practically hear the grin in her voice when she picks up the phone. "Do you think that everyone will look down at me if I wear a beret in the middle of London? Like, do you think everyone will think I'm just a tourist?" she asked.

"But you  _are_  a tourist," Arya pointed out.

"Yeah, but they don't know that."

"Sansa, you don't have an accent."

"They won't know that until I actually speak. And people on the street passing by me won't be speaking to me, so they'll never have to know."

"Then why do you care if they think you're a tourist?"

Sansa sighed heavily as if she was in the middle of speaking to a very small child. " _Because_ ," she said firmly. "If they see me walking down the street, I still like to make an impression. And not the kind of impression that turns into two Londoners talking in their posh accents about how I'm just another American trying to pass off as a local by using every stereotype I've ever heard of."

"...You overthink things too much."

Sansa stayed quiet.

Arya sighed. "Don't wear the beret. That's a French thing." She heard Sansa take a breath as she began to speak again, and quickly opened her mouth. "Don't wear a beret when you go to Paris," she said. "It'll be even worse than if you do it in London."

"Noted. So how's life back home?"

Arya bit her lip to keep her smile under control and looked down at her blankets, curling up closer in to her blankets. "Well...it's pretty good here," she said. "I'd say I'm having an even better time in New York than you are on your honeymoon."

"So I take it that you and Gendry worked things out," she stated.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "How did you even guess?" she asked.

"Are you stupid or what?" Sansa asked. "You barely even try to hide it, and then you're still somehow genuinely surprised when I'm able to figure out whatever it is that you're trying, and failing, to hide from me."

"Am I really that obvious?"

"Can you just tell me what happened with you and Gendry? Start from the beginning."

Arya pursed her lips. "Um, I don't really think starting from the beginning is a viable option, Sansa," she admitted hesitantly.

"So don't," she answered. And it was as simple as that. She didn't ask any more questions and left it as Arya wanted. Arya smiled and leaned back against her pillows piled up behind her as Sansa continued speaking. "I mean, you can tell me what's happened if you want, but I'm not going to force you to go into detail about your love life. It's private."

"Would you be opposed to listening to me talk about our breakfast yesterday?" Arya asked.

"Well, if you're  _offering_ ," Sansa said meaningfully, and Arya could hear the smile in her voice.

Arya crossed one leg over the other, curling her toes in her thick socks. "How much time do you have?"

( O O O )

"I spoke to Gendry yesterday," Jon piped up.

Arya's head popped up from over the door of his fridge and raised her eyebrows. "Oh?" she asked casually.

"Yeah. He said you guys had a nice talk and then you went out for breakfast the other day." He was sitting on his couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table, looking at her with curiosity.

She nodded and stole one of the cans of Coke stacked on the top shelf of the fridge before walking back to join him on the couch. "Yep. I went over after you practically shoved me out of the door the other day." Arya poked him in the ribs with her elbow teasingly. Jon caught her elbow in his hand and pulled her in to rest against his shoulder while he threw his arm around her affectionately. She rested against him and closed her eyes. "We had a long conversation about our issues, and...other stuff that we were going through."

He looked down at her. "And now?"

"Now...we're trying to work out how we're feeling with each other."

"Are you guys dating?"

"I think so."

"You think so? What, are you not sure?"

"No," she said honestly. "We're just trying to figure out where we stand on the whole thing."

God, she really hated  _things_.

Jon hugged her closer and rested his chin against the top of her head. "Well, I'm sure you're going to figure it all out."

"Get your goddamn feet off the coffee table!"

Arya opened her eyes and looked over to see Ygritte coming out of their bedroom, holding a stack of papers held together with a binder clip in one hand and her phone in the other.

Ygritte used the thick stack of papers to smack Jon's legs off the table and waved her phone at him threateningly. "Here," she said, throwing the papers down on his chest. "There's a list of possible apartments we can get."

"You guys officially started looking for a place?" Arya asked.

Jon nodded, already looking exhausted at the idea of going to all the appointments Ygritte had planned for them. "And we have to actually commit to a date for the wedding."

"An unheard of concept," Arya deadpanned.

Ygritte perched on the arm of the couch next to Jon, who immediately shifted so he could lean into her. Her hands went up to rest on his shoulders automatically like it was a reflex. They were so in sync with each other, so familiar, it made Arya feel a surge of happiness for Jon and yet she also felt an ache in the pit of her stomach.

"So, I heard something about Gendry," Ygritte said. "Have you figured out whatever thing you guys have been going through?"

Arya opened her mouth and then closed it, biting her lip. "Actually, I think I'm going to go see him now," she said, standing up from the couch. "I'll see you later. Good luck with the apartment hunting."

She closed the door behind her to the sound of Jon wishing her good luck and pulled out her phone.

( O O O )

The Chinese place was small.

Walking into the restaurant now, Arya realized she had never actually been inside the place until today. She usually just ordered the food over the phone, and there were times when they would get an order for pickup, but Gendry would always just go inside by himself and come back out with the food in his hands.

The restaurant was incredibly small, and the dim lighting was absolutely terrible. But there was her regular delivery man, standing behind the counter. His name, she'd learned after answering the door to his face more times than she could count, was Josh and he was studying in NYU. He was talking to a pretty girl who was also behind the counter. She had long black hair with a pink ombre effect, and she was smiling shyly at Josh.

When he saw Arya standing in the doorway, his eyes widened. "No way. You actually came inside for once?"

Arya smiled at him and the girl he was speaking to, moving further into the restaurant. "Yep. I'm actually supposed to be meeting Gendry here...have you seen him?" she asked, her voice raising a bit at the end with hope.

Josh nodded eagerly. "Yeah, your boyfriend's waiting for you." The girl's face relaxed just slightly when she heard Josh call Gendry her boyfriend; she must have become a bit paranoid when he recognized Arya and greeted her with such familiarity.

Josh had thought Arya and Gendry had been boyfriend and girlfriend for a few years now, and somehow, every time they tried to correct him, he always forgot. But Arya didn't bother to correct him this time as she followed him past the counter.

The restaurant really was small—there were only five tables set up in the place. It was clearly meant to be just a place to either get some takeout or pickup or pass through for a quick lunch break.

Gendry was waiting for Arya at one of tables nestled against the corner of one of the walls, scrolling through his phone. The table only had two chairs. When he glanced up and saw Josh heading his way with Arya following closely, he smiled widely and stood up.

When Arya got to the table, they stood there awkwardly, neither of them sure what they were supposed to do.

Should she hug him? Kiss his cheek? Just say hello and ask for a menu from Josh? Or should she simply sit down and start up a conversation? There were so many different ways they could start this whole thing off, and every option provided a different way their following conversation could go. Gendry solved the issue for her, settling with dropping a kiss on her cheek. He grinned warmly at her and sat down across from her. Arya quickly followed his lead and sat down in her chair, eagerly taking the menu Josh revealed from behind his back.

"I'll be back in a few minutes to take your order," he said and went back to the counter.

When he left, Arya looked at the laminated menu in front of her as if she didn't already know what she was going to order. "You know, I've never actually been inside this place," she mentioned without looking up from the menu.

"Really?" Gendry asked. He sounded genuinely confused. "What do you do when you're not with me, then? Do you just order containers upon containers of Chinese takeout to your house and sneak them up to your room?"

Arya's eyebrows stitched together in confusion and shook her head. "No, I...I don't really eat from this place without you."

"Really?" he repeated.

"Yeah, it just seems weird to eat without any egg rolls to steal from you."

Gendry huffed out a laugh and set his menu down, tapping his fingers against the surface of the table. "What brought this on?" he asked. "Like, why did you message me asking me to meet you here?"

Arya shrugged and put her menu down as well, folding her hands on top of the table. "I don't know," she confessed. "I guess maybe because I decided it was time we had an actual date? And what better place to have a first date than the place we get food from literally every single week?"

"An actual date?" he asked, a slow smile spreading across his face. Arya nodded in confirmation. "I wouldn't call this our first date, though. We did have breakfast together the other day at the diner. That was fun, wasn't it?"

It  _had_  been nice. They'd sat in a booth tucked away in the corner right next to the counter, and despite having complained about not being able to finish her breakfast, Arya had only ordered a vanilla milkshake while Gendry had stolen a few sips of it in between bites of his eggs and bacon.

Their conversation hadn't flowed quite as easy as she was used to, but at least there was a conversation to be had.

At least they were  _trying_  to make this work rather than throwing themselves in completely and expecting it all to work out immediately.

"No, that wasn't our first date," Arya said with finality.

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Because at that point we had agreed to go slowly until we were both on the same page."

"Concerning?"

He was smirking at her knowingly, the bastard. He was really going to make her say it, wasn't he?

Well, it was time for Arya to stop being so scared all the time. "Concerning us," she said simply.

"Us?"

"Yes, us. As in, when we would officially be dating."

"And this is when we officially begin dating?" he asked.

Arya shook her head. "No. We officially begin dating when we leave."

"Why is that?"

"Because then we've gotten the first real date out of the way. All of the awkwardness can finally go away."

"You really think this one date is going to get rid of the awkwardness?"

"Yes. Do you know why?"

"No, but I guess you're about to tell me, so—"

"Because we've acknowledged it now, so we can just get everything out in the open."

"Are you ready to order?"

Gendry's response was interrupted by Josh returning to their table, beaming at them happily, oblivious as to what they were discussing. As far as he was concerned, they had been dating for the past few years that he'd known them. Arya and Gendry quickly gave him their orders, not changing much from what they usually asked for when they called for takeout.

Josh disappeared once more, this time through the double doors that led to the kitchen. He emerged a few seconds later, right when the girl from the counter was walking towards her. Arya and Gendry watched as she bashfully gave him a soft peck on the lips. "Bye," she whispered and turned on her heel to walk out of the restaurant.

Their eyes followed him as he went back to the counter, a dazed grin still covering his face. "Good for him," Gendry said finally, turning back to face Arya. "He's a good kid."

"He is," she agreed. "I wonder who she is."

"Maybe some pretend girlfriend," Gendry suggested.

Arya snorted and closed her eyes. "I still can't believe we did that."

"I can't believe we thought it was a good idea," Gendry sighed.

"I can't believe that we thought no one would find out!"

"I can't believe that we didn't think anything could possibly go wrong."

Arya groaned and covered her face with her hands. "God, so many things went wrong, didn't they?"

"Definitely the most eventful few weeks of my life, I have to admit to that," he said.

"Yeah, I don't think I'll be entering any more fake relationships for the time being."

Gendry's eyebrows flicked up. "I hope it's not because you're trying to hide feelings for some more of your friends."

Arya bit her lip and shook her head. "No...no, it's definitely because I plan on dating you," she said.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. A shame you don't really have a say in this whole matter."

Gendry sucked his teeth and pursed his lips. "Yes, a shame."

Arya tapped her nails against the side of her empty glass that had been set there. "To shame?" she proposed.

He grinned at her. "To shame."

( O O O )

Arya woke up on Gendry's couch, her cheek pressed against the cracking leather of the arm of the couch that her head had been resting on uncomfortably.

The living room was pitch black. All the heavy room darkening blinds were drawn, blocking out all light from the city thriving outside. Arya couldn't even see her hand if she were to reach it out in front of her.

She straightened, wincing as her neck strained in protest. "Ow," she whimpered, putting a hand to the side of her neck to rub at it. There was a threadbare afghan that had been draped across her body, tangling up in her limbs. Arya absentmindedly shoved it off of her and moved to stand up.

Her legs shifted over the side of the couch, standing up and fumbling blindly on the wall for the light switch. When she finally flicked it on, light flooded the room and nearly blinded her with its suddenness. Arya squinted against the light and blinked a few times, looking around her and realizing where she had fallen asleep.

Arya quietly moved towards the hallway, trying not to make any sudden noise. The door to Gendry's bedroom was wide open. He was laying on his back on his bed, wearing a simple pair of sweats and no shirt. His head was turned to the side, his cheek crushed against his pillow with his eyes squeezed shut. Gendry had never been a peaceful looking sleeper. He slept silently, the sound of his deep and heavy breathing being the only noise he emitted, but he always looked like he was caught in an uncomfortable position, his face contorted with discomfort and pain. But that was just the way he slept. The first time Arya had seen Gendry when he was asleep, she had thought he was having a nightmare and tried to wake him up gently, but all she managed to do was knock his leg off the bed and jerk him awake in a panic.

She wasn't about to wake him up again. Instead, Arya made her way towards the bathroom and shut the door quietly behind her before turning on the light. She found her phone in her pocket and checked the time. Only ten past one in the morning. Arya sighed and tried to remember how she had ended up sleeping on Gendry's couch, but she felt a wave of exhaustion roll over her, slowly giving way to a headache that was sure to morph into something much bigger and much more painful.

Putting her hand to her forehead to try to get the throbbing of her headache, Arya walked back into the living room and shut the lights off again, trying to find her way back to the couch on her unsteady feet in the dark.

She stepped on the afghan when her knees hit the edge of the couch, and Arya leaned down to scoop it up into her hands as she stretched herself back out. She sent a silent but earnest thanks over to Gendry for investing in a long, wide couch that didn't make her feel like she had to suffocate or curl up into a stationary ball to avoid rolling off the couch or feeling too short for it while she slept. Just as she was trying to remember what had happened before she'd fallen asleep, her phone buzzed with a text.

_Jon: Heard you guys worked out everything for good. Happy for you._

It was the last thing she saw before the phone slipped out of her grasp and she fell asleep once more.

( O O O )

The next time Arya woke up, it was because Gendry had been shaking her shoulder gently for the past ten minutes. She had gotten herself in a much more comfortable position, sleeping on her side with one leg curled up to her chest while the other was straightened out in front of her. Her hands were tucked under the side of her face as a cushion, her head nestled comfortably right under the armchair and tucked close to her chin. Gendry had come out of his room a few hours later to find Arya still sleeping soundly on his couch, her body rising and falling methodically as she breathed deep and exhaled.

"Arya," he whispered softly, shaking her shoulder with just a bit more force than he had before. Arya's eyes snapped open, her breath hitching as she was shaken awake. The room darkening blinds had been raised just a bit by Gendry when he came out of his room, but the sun clearly hadn't risen all the way yet by the muted light showing through the small cracks in the blinds. Arya rubbed at her eyes tiredly and yawned as she sat up, shoving all of her hair out of her face and flexing her hands. "You can go sleep in my bed," he offered. "I didn't mean for you to fall asleep on the couch but—"

Arya blinked up at Gendry a few more times as she raised herself up on one of her elbows. "Why am I even sleeping on your couch?" she asked. Her voice was a little hoarse, and when she spoke, she felt how raw her throat felt. It felt like she had spent the night screaming. There was a bad taste in her mouth as well, a taste that she had probably been too tired to recognize or acknowledge last night when she had woken up the first time.

Gendry rubbed at his forehead and shifted her legs so he was sitting on the couch with her legs resting on top of his lap. "You don't remember?" he asked. She shook her head, eyes already closing again. "Well, when we got home from the Chinese place, we came back here and opened a bottle of wine."

"Ohhh," she mumbled, nodding a few times as she used the movement to nestle deeper into the couch cushions. "Did I get drunk?" Gendry made a noise that told her she was right. "Did I say anything embarrassing?" she asked.

At this, Gendry didn't answer her right away. Arya opened one eye and picked up her head rather unwillingly. He was looking at her with a strange look on his face, considering and relieved. Hopeful and anxious. Nervous and excited. A whole play of emotions flitted across his face while he gazed at her for a few more moments.

Finally, he opened his mouth to answer her. "You didn't say anything really embarrassing," he amended, and Arya coughed once as a way to give her more of an explanation.

"Well," he continued, "we started off with a bottle of wine that was half full and we finished that one off rather quickly, you know, as we tend to do, so I opened another one. And while we were drinking that one, we both kind of got a little...talkative. I didn't drink that much but you were on a roll and I knew that if I didn't say what I wanted to then, I probably would have lost my nerve. And I wouldn't have wanted that, so I made sure to get all of my thoughts out before you passed out."

Arya sucked in a breath at his last words. "Please tell me I didn't just pass out on your floor and you had to dump me on your couch," she moaned pitifully, turning her head further into the couch cushion in mortification. If she had blacked out from  _wine_  in front of Gendry, she would never  _not_  hate herself.

Gendry shook her leg to get her to look at him. "No, you didn't pass out on my floor," he reassured her.

"Oh," she said. "So then what did I do if I was so drunk?"

"You weren't so drunk, actually. Just kind of chatty. I get the feeling we were both thinking the same thing, like, why not just let all of the word vomit out while we can use the alcohol as an excuse. You know?"

Arya frowned at him. "That's not what I want, though," she said.

"I know. Me neither. That's why I woke you up. I wanted you to go sleep off the alcohol in an actual bed so that you can be coherent later on today."

"What time is it, exactly?" she asked.

Gendry stayed silent.

Arya sighed and closed her eyes. "Gendry, if it's even a minute earlier than ten in the morning, you're dead."

"It's five in the morning."

" _Gendry_!"

"Well, I couldn't just carry you into the bed!"

"Why not?"

"Because you probably would have woken up in the middle of me trying to pick you up and tried to attack me."

Arya glared at him but she didn't say anything, which meant she knew he was right.

"Anyway," Gendry said. His hand found her leg again and he began a slow pattern of meaningless shapes and random designs against her bare skin that managed to both soothe and distract Arya as she tried to get her thoughts in order through the haze of her drunken state of mind that hadn't really passed over into a full-on hangover but was no longer a mind-altering phase. "Basically, neither of us were really  _out of our mind_  drunk, but we were definitely a bit tipsy last night. I said some stuff. You said some stuff. We both kind of got a few more things out in the open that I don't think either of us would have said if we hadn't opened that second bottle of wine."

Arya shifted so she was laying completely on her back and crossed one ankle over the other. Gendry continued drawing shapeless patterns against her skin, staring off into space like he wasn't even aware that he was doing it. "What did I say?" she asked. "No, wait. Tell me what you said first." She reached out her hand and Gendry took it with his free hand, his fingers intertwining with hers without even looking down at her. It was almost effortless, how natural that one small action was. It filled her with hope.

Hope for whatever relationship they decided to pursue, whether it was a slow and steady build towards something more meaningful or something they decided to make completely casual but still exclusive until they both wanted exactly the same things. The thing was, Arya was beginning to realize how much she wanted what Gendry wanted—she wanted him to sit with her on the couch and draw patterns on her leg like it was such a regular thing to do, and to carry her off into his bed when she was too tipsy to move on her own. She wanted  _him_ , and she had finally been able to admit that.

Not just to herself, but to Gendry.

"I said how much I liked you," Gendry said without any trouble. It was like the words were so easy for him to say. She admired that so much, how he could simply make peace with his thoughts and feelings once he had actually figured out what they were. As soon as he knew what he was feeling, he had no difficulty telling her.

Sure, his words didn't always come out right, but then again, when did everyone always get it right?

"And what else?" she asked, smiling under the pleasant weight of his words.

"I said how happy I was that we finally got to this point."

"Hmm," she hummed thoughtfully. "Anything else?"

"That was the basic gist of everything  _I_ said. It was really just me rambling on about how sorry I was for not noticing how you were feeling for so long and then acting like a complete idiot when I actually did realize what I was feeling for you."

"Very interesting," Arya said. "And what was it that  _I_ said last night?"

Gendry smiled a secret smile to himself, looking down for a second as he remembered their conversation that Arya wanted so badly to be a part of. "You said that you were sorry for always choosing the wrong person."

"What?" she said, sitting up.

She tried to bring her legs back up to her chest, a knee-jerk reaction to protect herself, but Gendry held on to her ankle. Not tightly, or forcefully, but it grounded her. She didn't have anything to protect herself from over here.

"You said that...that you always dated boys you never saw a future with because you didn't want to get hurt by anyone."

"Did drunk Arya give any examples?" Arya asked.

"Of course. She's never been anything but thorough," he said wryly. "You dated that junior guy—what was his name, Mitchell, or something like that—because he was older than you and leaving for college out of state so you guys never really had a chance. And then Daniel because you always knew he'd have a successful career that wouldn't involve you. And then Edric because you never saw a future with him but you saw steadiness, and that's not something you ever had in a relationship before."

"Damn," Arya whistled. "I said all of those words coherently?"

"Well, I had to infer a lot of it," he admitted.

"That's not so embarrassing," she said. "Not as bad as I thought it would be when you woke me up."

"Oh, I'm not finished yet," Gendry said.

"What happened afterward?" Arya asked mournfully.

"This is when it got really embarrassing," he said. "You got really tired and insisted I take you to bed."

"No, I didn't!" Arya gasped in horror. She picked herself up on her elbows and glowered at his laughing face.

"Not in a 'Take me now or I'll never be satisfied again' kind of way," he said through his laughter. "At least, I don't think it was. It was more of a 'Just let me go to sleep now but you have to carry me because I can't even stand on my own two feet' kind of way. Although now that I think about it, you did try to kiss me a few times."

She kicked at him with the leg he wasn't holding, but he just laughed harder.

"So then what else did I do? You know, in case I ever want to think about this when I feel like being embarrassed beyond belief."

Gendry shook his head. "That's it. You tried to get me to take you to bed, and then when I said no because I'm a gentleman, you just stood up, stumbled your way over to the couch, and fell down."

Arya snorted and dropped her elbows, settling back against the couch.

"I tried to get you to wake up so I could bring you to the bed and I would sleep on the couch, but you were dead to the world. Only ten at night and you were literally out cold. Pretty impressive, honestly."

"Yeah, well, those are my talents," Arya said. "Drunken word vomit and passing out effortlessly wherever I lay down."

"Are you really that embarrassed?" Gendry asked.

Arya sighed and sat up again, pulling her legs away from Gendry reluctantly and drawing them up to her chest. "No," she said.

"Then what's wrong?"

"I didn't want to be drunk when I told you all that stuff about my old boyfriends. Oh, and by the way, his name wasn't Mitchell, it was Michael," she reminded him. "Like, I don't really remember it, which sucks, because there were certain things I wanted to say and now I don't know if I already have."

"Hey, I'm sure it's fine. We can always talk about it later."

Arya shrugged, tapping her thumb against the arm of the couch. "So it's five in the morning," she said.

"Yep. Sorry. I woke up and forgot you slept here, but I wanted you to actually sleep in a bed at some point."

"Where do my parents think I am?"

Gendry's eyes widened. "Oh, shit."

( O O O )

"Arya?" Catelyn mumbled into the phone. "Why are you calling at five in the morning?"

"Mom?" She sounded sleepy like Arya had just woken her up. "Are you asleep?" she asked.

Catelyn sighed. Noise crackled through the speaker like she was moving around. "Yes, and I would like to go back to sleep. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's...wrong. I just...don't you want to know where I am?"

"Well, when you didn't come home last night, we texted Jon, and he said you were spending the night at his apartment. Why didn't you tell us?"

Arya blinked. Then she blinked again. Finally, she shook her head and coughed. "Um, yeah, I just didn't know he told you. Sorry, I fell asleep pretty early last night and completely forgot. My fault. I'll be home later today."

"Well, don't wake me up when you get back in the house," Catelyn instructed and promptly hung up the phone.

Arya shut her phone and set it down on the coffee table, staring at it curiously. "Did you...talk to Jon last night at any point?" she asked Gendry, raising her eyebrows with the question.

Gendry furrowed his eyebrows as he thought it over, trying to remember. Suddenly, his face smoothed over in recognition and grabbed for his phone. "Oh, yeah. He called, tried to ask where you were. Said some stuff about how Cat and Ned were asking where you are."

"And you said...?"

"I think I said something about you falling asleep on the couch."

She remembered the text Jon had sent her last night right before she had fallen back asleep on the couch. She smiled to herself. "Anything else?"

"I think I might have said you drool in your sleep."

Arya's leg shot out as she kicked him in the knee. "Asshole."

Gendry chuckled and stood up, stretching his arms high over his head for a long while before he sighed and dropped them. "Do you want some breakfast?" he asked.

Arya grinned. "I can do breakfast."

( O O O )

The diner apparently didn't open until nine, which meant Arya was stuck without a proper breakfast since Gendry refused to buy anything other than toaster waffles. Which would have been fine with her, if he actually bought maple syrup instead of just eating them plain. She wrinkled her nose in disgust when he offered them on their way back to his car after leaving the closed diner.

"As if," she said. "You know, if you want to just eat plain waffles, fine, but you could at least get some maple syrup. Or if you don't want to do that, you could get some of the waffles with chocolate chips in them, or blueberries."

"But then what would you have to be disappointed in and complain about whenever you come over looking for food?"

They ended up driving over to Jon's apartment building. It was six by now, which meant that Ygritte would be up getting ready for work, and Jon would be trying to distract her and convince her to stay in bed for at least another ten minutes. Arya entered the code to get into the building and walked to the elevator, Gendry trailing behind her as she pressed the button to go up.

It was Ygritte who answered the door, her wild red hair clipped up in a messy bun. She was trying to straighten her shirt as she opened the door. "Oh. Hi."

Arya looked pointedly at her crooked shirt. It was obvious that Jon had managed to get Ygritte to stay in bed for a little longer this morning. "Hi," she said brightly.

Ygritte took the clip out of her hair and ran her hand through her curls. "Jon is in the kitchen if you're looking for him. I have to go; I have the first shift at the restaurant and I can't be late."

"Maybe you should focus on actually getting ready in the morning instead of having sex with Jon, then," Arya quipped as Ygritte moved past them and into the hallway.

While she waited for the elevator to come, Ygritte smirked at Arya. "Hey, who covered for you last night while you were shacking up with your new boy toy, Arya? Was it us?" The elevator doors opened and Ygritte winked at her. "I'll see you later."

Gendry scoffed as she disappeared. "Boy toy," he repeated incredulously.

Arya turned to him as they walked into the apartment. "Let it be said right now on record that I have never called you a boy toy in my entire life."

Jon was in fact in the kitchen, looking incredibly sleepy but also very happy as he tried to crack an egg without mixing in the shells.

When he noticed Arya and Gendry walking towards him, he smiled at them and gestured for them to sit down wherever they wanted. Arya lifted herself so she was sitting on the empty kitchen island and crossed her legs in a pretzel shape, her hands going to wrap loosely around Gendry's neck as he took up the space in front of her. "Morning, Jon," Arya greeted.

"Morning," he replied through a yawn. "You saw Ygritte on the way out?" he asked, and they both nodded in reply."You guys hungry? I'm making eggs. Although I don't think that's pretty good hangover food."

Gendry glared at him. "We're not hungover, asshole. We just had some wine last and that's it."

"Then why did Arya end up passed out on your couch? I could practically hear her snoring through the phone," Jon said. But he went to grab more eggs for the two of them, which was nice of him, so Arya didn't give him a snarky retort this time. "I take it you two worked out whatever you were trying to work through last night?" he asked. "Arya was in a frenzy trying to leave yesterday to meet you. Said she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she let you go."

"Okay, that is  _not_  what I said," Arya said defensively. "You aren't even trying to make it sound believable, Jon. You're so full of shit sometimes."

"So are you saying you would have been just fine with letting me go, living my life not being your boyfriend?" Gendry asked mockingly.

"That's not what I meant!" Arya said in a high-pitched voice. "I didn't even—Gendry! We were already technically dating by the time we met up yesterday!"

"Not true," he reminded her solemnly, shaking her head. "Remember? You said we were only officially dating  _after_  we finished eating last night, which was after you spoke to Jon. Therefore, before we started dating."

She glared at him in accusation. "Traitor," she said.

"Hey, it's nothing compared to what Gendry was spewing about you on the phone last night," Jon continued, happily mixing his eggs in the pan as he went on and on. "He was all, 'No, Jon, like you don't get it. I like her, man.' And I'd be all, 'Yeah, dude, I know. You're dating her. It's kind of obvious.' And then he'd be all, 'No, but like, you don't  _get it_. Like, I really like her.' It was a process just getting him to stop saying how cute you looked when you were drooling all over his couch."

Arya hit him squarely in the chest from her spot behind him, and Gendry let out a breath of air as her palm connected with his chest.

"Ow! Arya! I was drunk—I didn't know what I was saying!"

"How annoying it must be when someone you trust turns their back on you," Arya said pointedly.

"I didn't mean it like that! You know I was only kidding a few minutes ago!"

"Sucks for you," she said, turning back to Jon. "And  _you_." She pointed a finger at him threateningly with steadily narrowing eyes. "You may have covered for me last night, which I appreciate because God knows how Mom and Dad would have reacted if they found out I spent the night over at Gendry's apartment when they still think we're broken up.  _But_ —"

"You're welcome," Jon interrupted with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Arya grabbed a stray plastic cup that had been lying next to her on the counter and threw it at him.

" _But_ ," she carried on when Jon had dodged the cup, "that doesn't mean you get to go on teasing us. Because I have more than enough information on your relationship with Ygritte, and I don't think you'd care for her to hear all the stuff you've said to  _me_  while you were drunk, do you?" Jon shook his head silently like a child being scolded by his parents or a teacher. "Are we clear?"

Another nod.

"Good. Now. When's breakfast? I'm  _starving_."

( O O O )

Two weeks later, Arya was found lying in Gendry's bed with her head resting on his chest, his fingers playing idly in her hair.

"Your hair is growing out again," he observed absentmindedly. His hand continued brushing through the dark strands, watching as they slipped easily through the gaps between his fingers. "That happened rather fast."

She shrugged, using it as an excuse to nestle closer in a more comfortable position. "Do you think I should cut it?" she asked. "I liked it after I first did it."

"It was pretty," he replied. "Your choice, though. I don't think I should be one to make decisions on a girl's hair. I mean, look at mine."

Arya sat up, one elbow digging into the mattress to support her weight while the other one ran through Gendry's hair, messing it up. "No. I like the messy look. It makes you look—"

"Roguish? Dashing? Adventurous?"

"Well, you've just cheated yourself out of a compliment. A caveman. You look like a caveman."

He kissed her, swift and quick. "Thanks."

Arya settled back into his chest and Gendry's arm wrapped around her shoulders again. "When's Sansa coming home?"

"I forgot her flight back home, but soon. She's in Russia now."

"Russia?"

"Yep. Moscow. Staying there till the end of the week. She told me last night that they're going to see the ballet tonight.  _Swan Lake_."

"That must have been nice."

"I would love to go one day."

Gendry yawned and turned his face into Arya's hair. They moved into a spooning position, Arya curling up into a small ball while Gendry practically swallowed her from behind with the height he had on her. "Don't worry," he mumbled as he slowly fell asleep. "I'll take you to Russia. We'll only eat potatoes and drink vodka and go to the ballet and we'll only do those things every single night."

"You just stereotyped the hell out of Russia," she said, her own eyes closing.

Within minutes, they had fallen asleep, and Russia was forgotten by everyone except for Sansa and Willas, settling into their seats as a beautiful woman drifted across the stage on her toes.

( O O O )

"I think you should paint this wall white. And then that wall could be purple. This one could be pink...And then this wall here could be blood orange."

"Blood orange?" Arya repeated in disgust. "Gendry, it's red."

Gendry laughed to himself while Arya repeatedly mouthed  _Blood orange_  to herself, pushing her hair back from her face and facing her room.

She had decided that it was time for a change in her room, sick of staring at the walls that had been pale blue for as long as she could remember. Only now was she beginning to realize what a mistake it was to ask Gendry to come over to give her advice on what color she should paint it.

"What do you say we take a break and watch a movie," he suggested, quite literally out of nowhere.

Arya snorted. "Okay, first. We're not even the ones painting my room, so it's not like we have any work to take a break  _from_. Second, even if we  _were_  the people who were painting my room, we've gotten literally no work done since I haven't even decided on a color yet. And third, you suggesting we watch a movie is just an excuse for us to make out," she said, raising her eyebrows and daring him to contradict her.

Gendry stared back, unashamed. "What's your point?" he asked.

Arya looked at him for a few more seconds and shrugged. "Yeah, okay. I'll get a movie up on Netflix."

Gendry saw no point in arguing with whatever choice she went with, considering he was planning on kissing Arya before the opening credits even finished. So when she picked  _Dead Poets Society_ , he kept his mouth closed and settled comfortably on her bed.

But when he tried to lean towards her ten minutes into the movie, Arya put her hand on his chest.

"Shush, Gendry," she ordered, even though he hadn't opened his mouth. "I'm interested in this kid. Stop whatever you're planning."

Gendry scoffed in astonishment. "But—you said—"

"I've never seen this movie before," Arya said simply without taking her eyes off the screen in front of her. "Hey, isn't this the dad from  _That '70s Show_?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Damn. Does he only know how to play asshole dads?"

"Probably."

Arya turned to his wounded face and smiled. "I promise after the movie I'll kiss you as long as you want," she said, patting the top of his head.

Gendry caught her hand in his and kissed the inside of her palm. "Deal."

Two and a half hours later, Arya was still trying to wipe away the tears from her cheeks, sniffling quietly as Gendry blinked back tears of his own, clearing his throat and coughing twice before speaking.

"Um, that was a pretty good movie," he said gruffly.

Arya sniffed one more time and wiped at her cheeks again. "That was a terrible movie," she said passionately. "Terrible."

"You liked it," he said.

"I didn't," she said vehemently.

"You're crying. That means you liked it. It made you feel strong enough to start  _crying_."

Arya looked at him through her slightly red eyes. "I'm not making out with you," she said simply.

Gendry scoffed and turned away. "Good. I don't think I want to make out after watching that movie. Doesn't feel right."

"Hey, what do you say we get some food instead?" Arya asked, sitting up from the bed and swinging her legs over the edge.

"What are you in the mood for?"

Arya thought for a moment, biting her lip, before speaking again. "Pancakes," she said decisively.

Gendry raised one eyebrow. "Pancakes? Arya, it's seven o' clock," he said. "At night. And you want breakfast food?"

She shrugged. "I'm in the mood for pancakes. Come on," she pleaded, reaching out to take his hand in hers. "Breakfast for dinner? What do you say?  _Please_?"

Gendry laughed once and sighed in defeat. "I can do breakfast."


End file.
